Translation: Dusapin’s Une musique en train de se faire

Thomas Meyer, Mettmenstetten, Switzerland

Born in 1955 French composer Pascal Dusapin is one of the most striking figures in New Music. His work is extensive, spanning chamber music, several concerts and orchestral pieces as well as various operas.
In 2006/07 Dusapin was made “Chaire de Création artistique” at the renowned Collège de France where he was invited to formulate his musical thought into a series of lectures.
These lectures were then published in 2009 under the heading Une musique en train de se faire and these are now to be rendered into German with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation by the Zürich and Paris-based translator Ulrike Kolb.
This will make it possible not only to introduce a key and independent figure in the field of French music to the German-speaking world but also spread this composer’s mindset. Dusapin was never oriented to traditional models or styles. In his lectures Pascal Dusapin formulates the main lines of reflection on his compositions but also more generally explains his approach to composing and the genesis of the music beyond the stream of time: using formal plans that are bent and reverted on detours, using a concept of time that even attempts experimenting with backwards-running music.
For him composing means inventing impulses and flows; for him it is a constant battle with time, with musical time and with compositional time as these contradict each other and yet overlay each other too. 

Spring 2014
Switzerland