Biography

Michaël LEVINAS

Born in Paris, Michaël Levinas went through the classical and high level teaching of the National Superior Conservatory of Paris, running at once studies of piano, the famous class of accompaniment, orchestra conducting and composing. In that institution he met the great musicians who made the deepest impression on him, in particular, the pianists Vlado Perlemuter, Yvonne Lefébure, but also Yvonne Loriod and Olivier Messiaen.
Besides those classical studies at the National Superior Conservatory of Paris, his musical training was marked from his very early childhood by another musical tradition, the Russian school of piano, thanks to his mother, the pianist Raissa Lévy. Coming from Moscow and Lithuania, she had studied several years in Vienna, in particular with the virtuosi and teachers Sirota, Isserlis and some other great piano masters of Central Europe. This musical tradition was also those musicians’ one, at the same time performers and creators.
Michaël Levinas was appointed as scholarship student at the Villa Medicis in Rome, directed then by the painter Balthus, another of his great encounters.
He created in 1973, with his classmates of Messiaen’s class, Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey, the ensemble Itinéraire.
Between his first works, like Arsis et Thésis (1971), Clov et Hamm (1973), Appels (1974), Froissements d’ailes (1975), Ouverture pour une fête étrange (1979), Concerto pour un piano espace (1977-1981, including his great works for orchestra, like La Cloche fêlée (1988), Par-delà (1994), Évanoui (2009) or very recently Amphithéâtre (2012), Michaël Levinas is a pioneer regarding to the new ideas of the instrumental writing and the development of the sound range by the technological environments. His works for ensemble, orchestra and soloist are created and repeated by the most famous ensembles, festivals and institutions in France and abroad : Festival of Donaueschingen, International meetings of de Darmstadt, Ircam, Cité de la Musique, Ensemble InterContemporain, Ensemble Ictus, Ensemble Itinéraire, Klang Forum, Le Balcon, Radio France, Multilatérales, Biennale de Venise…
Let us add that within the contemporary musical scene, Michaël Levinas is above all characterized by an undeniable dramatic gift, a connection with the text, the theatre and the scene. Michaël Levinas is well known as a composer of operas and was commissioned by important European theatres. Since La Conférence des oiseaux (1985), he wrote not less than three great lyrical works, all of them created in important European theatres : Go-gol (1996), adapted from Gogol’s novel, (Le Manteau) ; Les Nègres, adapted from Jean Genêt’s text ; La Métamorphose (2010), adapted from Kafka’s story. This closeness with the text, literature, poetry is central to the close relation which  Michaël Levinas maintained all his life with his father, the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who passed on to him the taste of languages, thought, risk, interpretation and writing.
A new opera, adapted from Saint Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince (commissioned by both operas of Lausanne and Lille) is created in 2015 in these two theatres as well as in the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Chatelet in Paris, and then in Liège.
Michaël Levinas teaches at the National Superior Conservatory of Music of Paris and is Member of the Beaux-Arts Academie of the Institut de France.
 

Work(s)

" Se briser "

for ensemble

Editions Henry Lemoine

Pianist, concertist and composer Michael Lévinas occupies an original place in the musical life today. This dual profile determines his interpretation and writing. He had as masters Vlado Perlemuter, Yvonne Loriod and Olivier Messiaen. He was a resident of the Villa Medicis, at the time directed by the painter Balthus.

Often connected to the power spectrum and the founding of the l'Ensemble Itinéraire, the career of composer Michael Lévinas is identified with the creation of highly esteemed works. Included among them Appels (1974), Ouverture pour une fête étrange (1979), la Conférence des oiseaux (1985), Par delà (commissioned by the Donaueschingen Festival Orchestra under the direction of Südwestfunk Michael Gielen in 1994) and more recently Implorations (Printemps Arts 2007) or his opera "Go-gol" (created by the Festival Musica in Strasbourg, IRCAM and the Montpellier Opera in a production directed by Daniel Mesguich in 1996). His opera Les Nèges , based on the play by Jean Genet, for which the composer wrote the booket was commissioned by the Opera National de Lyon and Geneva Opera, created in 2004 and staged by Stanislas Nordey and reproduced at the great theater of Freiburg in 2006, in a new production. The recording that was published by Sisyphus in 2008 is a public and critical success.

His work on what he calls the "polyphonic paradox", based primarily on a complexe counterpoint of tones and changes in temperament, has resulted in, among others, Les Lettres enlacées IV (2000), Se briser for ensemble (2008, commissioned by the festival Ars Musica, Brussels) and Evanoui for orchestra and electronics (commissioned by Radio France, created March 6, 2009 in Paris, IRCAM).

The year 2008 was particularly intense. Michaël Lévinas was in residence at the Abbaye d'Ardenne with the ensemble DeCaelis. Three works were created during this year: "Les trois chansons pour la Loterie Pierrot et Jean la Grêle", "Le O de Haut" and an organ piece commissioned by "Musique nouvelle en liberté" and created in the "Paris de la music" in November 2008, at the Eglise Saint Etienne du Mont by Thierry Eschaich.

Michaël Lévinas is currently in residence at the CIRM in Nice and finished a new piece on poems by Gerashim Luca. The creation is scheduled for November 20, 2009 in MANCA.

A third opera, composed from La Métamorphose of Franz Kafka, is now in the processus of being written and composed in collaboration with Valère Novarina and emmanuel Moses. This work, commissioned by the Opera de Lille, will be created in spring 2011.

Michaël Lévinas is a professor at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris.

He was elected in March 2009 by the Academy of Beaux- Arts to the seat of Jean-Louis Florentz.

NOTICE

La "brisure" is a metaphor used by the instramentalists to identify a specific game mode. Thus, for a pianist, break an octave is to alternate a tremolo in the two heights of an interval.

Se briser represents a step in a work of polyphonic writing initiated at first with my first piece for string quintet Les Lettres enlacées IV , the opening of my opera Les négres and my second string quartet.

It is a slow process that evolves from a homophonic to a slow break. This process generates a musical form, following several principles that I will try to analyze and summarize:

1 ° The phenomenon of "polyphonic paradox" : it is an almost endless process of redeployment of octave sound that gives the acoustical illusion of abolishing the difference between the scales going up and those going down. This writing technique, psycho-acoustic is inspired by those developed by Risset in "Mutations " and Ligeti in some of his studies for piano. One can detect a premonitiory experience of this type of polyphony in Debussy's prelude in Voiles for piano. There is also a paradoxical perception in the drawings of Escher.

2 ° The development of scales that are slowly changing constitue harmonic grids (notes that break). These scales and the harmonies are altered, producing a "doppler effect".

3 ° The breaks help discover a diagonal polyphonic movement that is similar both to the keyboard chip of the romantic era (Schumann, Brahms, Liszt) but also, without doubt, the KlangfarbenMelodie...

We therefore have both a diagonal polyphony that emerges between the lines and a break in the tones that alters harmonically in its spectral relationship between the fundamental and partial: an a tone that changes into a "doppler effect" as well.

4 ° The harmonic language superimposes different tuning points and a particular instrumental ensemble. Of cords, pinched, struck, percussion and wind.

5 ° The rhythmic writing of Se briser wants to take over some of the notations of < em> Préludes non mesurés by Couperin by following the evolution of the alteration of harmonic scale acceleration, and deceleration of the breaks.

This piece was partly recreated and developed for a large orchestra Evanoui (2009).

Se briser was an opportunity to align the relationship between the composition of a group of instruments and internal structures of a musical language.

In évanoui I kept and completed a small orchestra separate from the symphony orchestras herited from the era of language of tone and temperament. This small orchestra, reproduces the main lines of instrumental formation and the diapasons of se briser.

Michaël Levinas

" Trois chansons pour la loterie Pierrot et Jean la Grêle "

for 5 female voices

Editions Henry Lemoine

Pianist, concert ist and composer Michael Lévinas occupies an original place in the musical life today. This dual profile determines his interpretation and writing. He had as masters Vlado Perlemuter, Yvonne Loriod and Olivier Messiaen. He was a resident of the Villa Medicis, at the time directed by the painter Balthus.

Often connected to the power spectrum and the founding of the l'Ensemble Itinéraire, the career of composer Michael Lévinas is identified with the creation of highly esteemed works. Included among them Appels (1974), Ouverture pour une fête étrange (1979), la Conférence des oiseaux (1985), Par delà (commissioned by the Donaueschingen Festival Orchestra under the direction of Südwestfunk Michael Gielen in 1994) and more recently Implorations (Printemps Arts 2007) or his opera "Go-gol" (created by the Festival Musica in Strasbourg, IRCAM and the Montpellier Opera in a production directed by Daniel Mesguich in 1996). His opera Les Nèges , based on the play by Jean Genet, for which the composer wrote the booket was commissioned by the Opera National de Lyon and Geneva Opera, created in 2004 and staged by Stanislas Nordey and reproduced at the great theater of Freiburg in 2006, in a new production. The recording that was published by Sisyphus in 2008 is a public and critical success. ?

His work on what he calls the "polyphonic paradox", based primarily on a complexe counterpoint of tones and changes in temperament, has resulted in, among others, Les Lettres enlacées IV (2000), Se briser for ensemble (2008, commissioned by the festival Ars Musica, Brussels) and Evanoui for orchestra and electronics (commissioned by Radio France, created March 6, 2009 in Paris, IRCAM e). ?

The year 2008 was particularly intense. Michaël Lévinas was in residence at the Abbaye d'Ardenne with the ensemble DeCaelis. Three works were created during this year: "Les trois chansons pour la Loterie Pierrot et Jean la Grêle", "Le O de Haut" and an organ piece commissioned by "Musique nouvelle en liberté" and created in the "Paris de la music" in November 2008, at the Eglise Saint Etienne du Mont by Thierry Eschaich.

Michaël Lévinas is currently in residence at the CIRM in Nice and finished a new piece on poems by Gerashim Luca. The creation is scheduled for November 20, 2009 in MANCA.

A third opera, composed from La Métamorphose of Franz Kafka, is now in the processus of being written and composed in collaboration with Valère Novarina and Emmanuel Moses. This work, commissioned by the Opera de Lille, will be created in spring 2011.

Michaël Levinas is a professor at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris .

He was elected in March 2009 by the Academy of Beaux- Arts to the seat of Jean-Louis Florentz.

Commissioned by IMEC and the Abbey of Royaumont, these three songs that put to music the texts of Valère Novarina were written for the Ensemble Vocal DeCaelis (five female voices specializing in the interpretation of medieval music).

The choices that guided the writing of this piece are linked to concerns about not only the relationship between text and music, the literary structure of a text- musical form. These concerns relate to a very limited problem: decrypt a more primordial link between linguistic and semiotic structures of a sentence and those that generate what I mean by the term: phrase musical .

Les Trois Chansons pour la Lotterie Pierrot et Jean la Grêle , as in Le O du Haut the work of composition is based on the complex relationship that develops between "the sound and the sense".

The result is a polyphonic writing, based on L'Arsis et Thesis of the musical phrase underlined by the harmonic process, an organization of stress and rhythm-based, at the same time on tension and harmonic relaxation, the evolution of scales and whether flexible prosody of french language, for which I require the accuracy of a popular pronunciation, like I heard in my childhood from the "country folk" (the second song especially... La Lotterie Pierrot...).

La Chair de l'Homme from Valère Novarina, an original powerful book, at the same time prose, poetry and virtual theater corresponding exactly to my expectations and the guidance of my writing.

The five singers of the ensemble DeCaelis, placed as a pentagon on the stage, "call each other ... They break up into space proper nouns, words, grammatical forms of the language of Novarina.

The vowels operate like roundabouts in space. They pass like this from one voice to another, making the high notes evolve by the movement in space, like a doppler effect. Do not misunderstand the apparent simplicity of grammatical texts that I selected "La Chair de l'Homme" of Novarina: subject, verb and direct object. This apparent grammatical simplicity constantly repeated, reveals to me the essence of the musical phrase and a form inspired by the virtual theater of Novarina and his metaphysical quest.

This book by Novarina is an allegory of the temporality of his plays and characters of his drama.

Jean la Grêle and the multitude of other names dead or alive, appear out of their modest worlds, their graves. They participate in a fun fair dream, then "lotterie Pierrot" stops (gently...) on the eight".

The prologue to the second song, is to wake the dead with a long list of liturgical names. Novarina devotes several pages La Chair de l'Homme to this list of names.

The last the three songs are dedicated to the almost unpronounceable name of "Deus".

Michael Lévinas

" Le O du Haut "

For a 6 mixed voices choir poetry from Gerashim Luca

Editions Henry Lemoine

Pianist, concertist and composer Michael Lévinas occupies an original place in the musical life today. This dual profile determines his interpretation and writing. He had as masters Vlado Perlemuter, Yvonne Loriod and Olivier Messiaen. He was a resident of the Villa Medicis, at the time directed by the painter Balthus.

Often connected to the power spectrum and the founding of the l'Ensemble Itinéraire, the career of composer Michael Lévinas is identified with the creation of highly esteemed works. Included among them Appels (1974), Ouverture pour une fête étrange (1979), la Conférence des oiseaux (1985), Par delà (commissioned by the Donaueschingen Festival Orchestra under the direction of Südwestfunk Michael Gielen in 1994) and more recently Implorations (Printemps Arts 2007) or his opera "Go-gol" (created by the Festival Musica in Strasbourg, IRCAM and the Montpellier Opera in a production directed by Daniel Mesguich in 1996). His opera Les Nèges , based on the play by Jean Genet, for which the composer wrote the booket was commissioned by the Opera National de Lyon and Geneva Opera, created in 2004 and staged by Stanislas Nordey and reproduced at the great theater of Freiburg in 2006, in a new production. The recording that was published by Sisyphus in 2008 is a public and critical success.

His work on what he calls the "polyphonic paradox", based primarily on a complexe counterpoint of tones and changes in temperament, has resulted in, among others, Les Lettres enlacées IV (2000), Se briser for ensemble (2008, commissioned by the festival Ars Musica, Brussels) and Evanoui for orchestra and electronics (commissioned by Radio France, created March 6, 2009 in Paris, IRCAM ).

The year 2008 was particularly intense. Michaël Lévinas was in residence at the Abbaye d'Ardenne with the ensemble DeCaelis. Three works were created during this year: "Les trois chansons pour la Loterie Pierrot et Jean la Grêle", "Le O de Haut" and an organ piece commissioned by "Musique nouvelle en liberté" and created in the "Paris de la music" in November 2008, at the Eglise Saint Etienne du Mont by Thierry Eschaich.

Michaël Lévinas is currently in residence at the CIRM in Nice and finished a new piece on poems by Gerashim Luca. The creation is scheduled for November 20, 2009 in MANCA.

A third opera, composed from La Métamorphose of Franz Kafka, is now in the processus of being written and composed in collaboration with Valère Novarina and Emmanuel Moses. This work, commissioned by the Opera de Lille, will be created in spring 2011.

Michaël Lévinas is a professor at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris.

He was elected in March 2009 by the Academy of Beaux- Arts to the seat of Jean-Louis Florentz.

Le O de Haut is a commission of the Neue Vocal Solisten Stuttgart. These are two madrigals in which make sing two poems of the romanian poet Gerashim Luca, the Triple and Ma déraison d'être , poems from the collection heros-limite published by Corti.

These madrigals are written for a mixed vocal ensemble: three female voices (two sopranos and a mezzo-soprano ) and three male voices, a high, a baritone and a bass.

The creation of Le O de Haut is a contemporary work made for Les trois Chansons pour la lotterie Pierrot et Jean la Grêle on the texts of Novarina.

The musical concerns and modes of writing are very close and these two works were performed together in a concert at the Abbey of Royaumont in September 2008.

Gerashim Luca is a poet from the current Lettrist. He moved away from this by using grammatical structures that make up the sentence and his poems often refer to a form of versification with complex and devious forms. He sometimes returns to very recognizable forms such as rondo. But the origin of lettrist Luca opens up a particular sound field that can only fascinate the musician.

Words, their assemblies, the structure of language and semiotics of the phrase play on the lettrist perception of the french language.

I found in these poems this so rich ambivalence between "the sound and sense" : "L'O de Haut" or even "le N de la Haine".

There is also in the poetry of Luca and his game between sound and sense a chemistry between the words, the multiple variants of pronunciation of a vowel in french (for example, the different pronunciation of the vowel o in the following words: viola, violin) the rediscovery of this I call: the wonderful turn-of Verlaine.

I found, putting these poems to music, the madrigal style. This, even more than in Les trois chansons pour la Lotterie Pierrot , authentic harmonic grids that alter and drift slowly and of false parallel intervals between the voices, because in fact derived from contrapuntal exchanges.

There is also in Luca Gerashim periods that are not only references to the rondo. One can also hear the memory of his ancestral tradition: the cheers of very specific religious rite of the offices of the jewish tradition of Central Europe (alternating between the singing tears of the celebrant and the whispers and cries of acclamation from the assembly)

L'OFFICIANT : the despair

L'ASSEMBLEE: the despair has two pairs of legs, three pairs of legs, four pairs of legs...

The musical setting of this poem imposes itself to me

It would be too little to bring down these poetic forces of Luca to the simple lacanian deciphering of the unconscious meaning of the sound of words, even if the conclusion of the poem sings: despair has no pairs... of legs.

The unique flexibility of the french language always created these complex rhythmic structures I call "lettres-accents".

These "lettres-accents" emerge by the lettrist listening of word and of the phrase with a meaning too reductive.

Then comes the melody and polyphony madrigal. Then emerges the linguistical structures and purely abstract music, a poetic of cold and pure proportions.

Michaël Levinas