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Before the premiere of the first part of his large spacial orchestra triptych, Philippe Manoury talked about his musical career, his first contact with electronic music and his handling of the large orchestral apparatus.
Part science documentary, part true crime story: Philippe Manoury about his reconstruction of Boulez' Livre pour quatuor.
Voyage of the Philharmonie: Philippe Manoury's Triptych for Orchestra
Philippe Manoury is regarded as one of the most important French composers, in addition to being a researcher and forerunner in the field of live electronics. Despite in-depth training as a pianist and composer–he was instructed by Max Deutsch (a student of Schoenberg's) and Michel Philippot, among others–he considers himself to be self-taught. “The composition must be born from an inner longing, and requires no preconditions.” Accordingly, he began his first compositional experiments on his own in parallel to his first lessons in music, and, at the age of 19, his works were already being performed at major festivals for new music. His breakthrough culminated with the premiere of his piano piece Cryptophonos in 1974, interpreted by Claude Helffer.
Following two years of teaching at Brazilian universities, his compositional interest in mathematical models brought Philippe Manoury to the Paris Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM). He worked there from 1981 together with the mathematician Miller Puckette on a programming language for interactive live electronics (very well-known today under the name MAX-MSP). Between 1987 and 1991, he composed Sonus ex machina, a cycle focusing on the real-time interaction between acoustic instruments and computer-generated sounds–a topic that continues to influence his artistic work and theoretical texts.
Alongside pieces for large orchestras such as Sound and Fury, the violin concerto Synapse (2009), and Echo-Daimónon for piano, electronics, and orchestra (2012), recent years have also seen the premieres of Philippe Manoury’s string quartets (Stringendo and Tensio, both 2010; Melencolia, 2013; Fragmenti, 2016) and instrumental works with electronics (Partita I for viola, 2007; Partita II for violin, 2012; Le temps, mode d’emploi for two pianos, 2014). The moment of interaction characterises his approach–not only in smaller works or compositions featuring electronics, but also with large orchestras: he turns them into a sound laboratory where new interactive possibilities are tested, expanding music theatre as a form.
This increasingly includes the spatial arrangement of musicians in the concert hall, for example in his work In situ, awarded the Orchestral Prize in Donaueschingen in 2013. Inspired by François-Xavier Roth, who conducted the premiere, Philippe Manoury extended the composition into the Köln Trilogie, a large-scale spatial triptych for the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne. After Ring (2016) and a repeat performance of In situ (2017), the trilogy was completed with Lab.Oratorium for two singers, two actors, vocal ensemble, choir, orchestra, and electronics, staged by Nicolas Stemann and premiered in May 2019. The work, which is also an expression of the explicitly political commitment to humanity, folds texts by Ingeborg Bachmann, Hannah Arendt, and Georg Trakl into current events and was performed to wide acclaim in Cologne as well as at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and Paris Philharmonic. The composer had previously collaborated with director Nicolas Stemann on the music theatre project Kein Licht, based on Elfriede Jelinek’s text of the same name, which premiered at the RuhrTriennale 2017 with subsequent performances in Strasbourg, Paris, Zagreb, and Luxembourg.
Despite the pandemic, a number of new works were also heard in the past seasons. The 20/21 season began with the world premiere of a fanfare for brass for the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne. As part of a focus on Philippe Manoury at the Casa da Música, two concerts were realised under Peter Rundel; the Passacaglia pour Tokyo with the Remix Ensemble (piano: Nicolas Hodges) and B-Partita (violin: Ashot Sargsyan) were performed. This was followed by the world premieres of the Kein Licht Suite at the Philharmonie Luxembourg, written for the Lucilin Ensemble and mezzo-soprano Christina Daletska, and the concerto for piano and ensemble Mouvements, interpreted by Ancuza Aprodu and the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain under Bruno Mantovani as part of Festival Messiaen. In September 2021, Daniel Barenboim launched Das wohlpräparierte Klavier, a large piece for piano and live electronics, at the season opening of the Boulez Saal in Berlin, followed by the world premiere of Argumenta for two percussionists at the Festival Offbeat in Copenhagen.
In June 2022, Philippe Manoury celebrated his 70th birthday, which was honoured with numerous concerts throughout the year. Among the many events, the Paris Percussion Group performed Silex for twelve percussionists at the Auditorium de Radio France in May. Philippe Manoury's 13 Bagatelles, composed for the pianist Martin von der Heydt, were also heard for the first time in October at the NOW! festival in Essen. In December, two premieres were on the programme of a concert at the Philharmonie de Paris with the Ensemble intercontemporain under François-Xavier Roth: in addition to the censembel concerto Grammaires du sonore, Vier Lieder (aus Kein Licht) as well as Fragments pour un portrait were performed together with mezzo-soprano Christina Daletska.
The 2023/24 season is marked by the completion of the orchestral triptych, whose opening work Anticipations was premiered in autumn 2022 with the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música under Baldur Brönnimann. First performances of the work followed in March in Paris with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and in August 2023 with the Tonkünstler Orchestra under Brad Lubman at the Grafenegg Festival, where Philippe Manoury was composer-in-residence. A second, shorter part of the triptych entitled Rémanences-Palimpseste will be heard in December 2023 with the SWR Symphony Orchestra under Teodor Currentzis in Stuttgart and at the Philharmonie Berlin as part of a project around Mahler's 10th Symphony. The final work, Présences, will be performed in August 2024 at the Suntory Hall Summer Festival, where Philippe Manoury is artist-in-residence; the French premiere with the Orchestre National de France is planned for the 2024/25 season.
Philippe Manoury has held various teaching and artistic positions, including at Ensemble intercontemporain (1983-1987), Conservatoire de Lyon (1987-1997), Orchestre de Paris (1995-2001), Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (1998-2000), and the Scène nationale d’Orléans (2001-2003). He is professor emeritus of the University of California San Diego where he taught composition from 2004 to 2012. In 2013, he returned to his native France where he was named Professor of Composition at the Académie Supérieure de la Haute École des Arts du Rhin in Strasbourg. His own academy for young composers took place from 2015 to 2018 as part of the Musica Festival in Strasbourg. Following an invitation from the Collège de France, in 2017 he was also a given the “Chaire Annuelle de Création Artistique.” In the 2022/23 season he will be a jury member of the Luciano Berio International Composition at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia.
Philippe Manoury has received numerous awards for his work. In 2014, he was named Officier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. Philippe Manoury is a member of the honorary committee of the French-German Fund for Contemporary Music/Impuls Neue Musik. In summer 2015, he was elected as a member of the Berlin Akademie der Künste.
Philippe Manoury’s works are published by Universal/Editions Durand. A collection of texts by and about the composer can be found on his blog at www.philippemanoury.com.
This biography is to be reproduced without any changes, omissions or additions, unless expressly authorised by the artist management.
2023/2024 season
Eine Liste der Werke von Philippe Manoury finden Sie unter www.philippemanoury.com sowie auf der Website seines Verlags Durand-Salabert-Eschig.
"Philippe Manoury created glistening, dramatic, expressive, tender, brutal sound worlds, in which rumba rhythms and steel drums also appear organically. The recording of the world premiere production leaves a deep impression and has a lasting effect. A ripe achievement by all involved."
Concerti, Eckhard Weber, 3/6/2021 on the CD Lab.Oratorium
"Philippe Manoury is an essential player in today's music. Renewing the codes and languages of music is his motto. He sees his role as a composer as that of an experimenter in the manner of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Schönberg. Manoury integrates the use of electronics into his musical composition. The piano was already in dialogue with a computer system in real time in Pluton and Le temps mode d'emploi. (...) Das wohlpräparierte Klavier, whose title and form, with their mixture of fantasy and rigour, refer to Bach (and his 'well-tempered keyboard'), is a fascinating piece. (...) One is seized by the tragic force of the proposal, surprised by tribal sounds, droplets, bells, claves, the cry of the wind, chords hammered in the distance, a music box in this hazy, fantastic and seductive inharmony."
Toute la Culture, Nicolas Chaplain, 7/09/2021 on the world première of Das wohlpräparierte Klavier composed for Daniel Barenboim
“Time, A User's Manual is an exhilarating study at once of the endless transformations of sonority and sound mass that technology allows and, more obscurely, of the ways in which any piece of music is time-bounded.”
Sunday Times, Paul Driver, 28/07/2019 on the CD Le temps, mode d'emploi
“[W]hat's really impressive is how well the live electronics interact with pianists Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher. […] Entrancing sounds apart, it's possible to enjoy the music as a demonstration of the pair’s technical skills: rich, deep chords ringing out to thrilling effect and the faster, percussive passages superbly co-ordinated.”
The Arts Desk, Graham Rickson, 14.09.2019 on the CD Le temps, mode d'emploi
“Politics, art and social reality, video, light, spoken word, singing and music are all connected in an often elaborately interwoven, current work that effectively visualizes the absurd associations of Jelenik’s text.”
Klassik.com, Ursula Decker-Bönniger, 28/08/2017 on Kein Licht
“In his score [Philippe Manoury] has found a fitting counterpart to Jelinek’s text, which consists of quotes mined from various sources.”
Stuttgarter Nachrichten, 28/08/2017 on Kein Licht
“The musicians refined some of these brief wisps of sound into moments of exceptional beauty, like the glassy chords in a spectralist cloud of the second movement ('Calmo') or the muted soft murmurs of the sixth ('Passaggio').”
Washington Classical Review, Charles T. Downey, 25/03/2017 on the Arditti Quartet’s US premiere performance of Fragmenti, String Quartet No. 4, at the Library of Congress
“Following the death of Pierre Boulez, Philippe Manoury is the figurehead of the French avant-garde. In his 2010 violin concerto 'Synapse', the pioneer of computer music simulated shimmering, condensing feedback loops between the orchestra and the solo part with instrumental subtlety: Hae-Sun Kang steadily intensified the sound with cool and clear elegance.”
Münchner Merkur, Anna Schürmer, 25/01/2016 on Synapse
“At times the layers of sound roared around, as if the listener were being trampled by the four riders of the apocalypse or in the midst of a hailstorm. At other moments, the electronics chimed, crackled, gurgled, snapped, whispered, dissolved and caressed. A feast for the experiential completist, or even for the merely naive and curious.”
The Guardian, Fiona Maddocks, 18/10/2015 on Le temps, mode d’emploi for two pianos and live electronics
“The writing is sometimes strikingly beautiful, especially in the moments of stasis that are coloured by the decaying electronic sonorities echoing around the hall.”
The Guardian, Andrew Clements, 13/10/2015 on Le temps, mode d’emploi for two pianos and live electronics
“The rhythms in Manoury’s 'Zones de turbulences' for two pianos and orchestra bombard the audience with humorous provocation, virtuosic fodder for the brilliant soloists Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher, but no less so for the intensely present Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under the confident baton of Frank Ollu. The orchestra highlights the sound of the pianos with softly woven string layers, it can join itself beyond recognition to the pianos with plucks from the harp and light tinkling tones on the wood block. Just as it seamlessly placed the most exact, dazzling accents in the wind.”
Der Tagesspiegel, 23/01/2015
“Behind the sharp particle fire and the subtle electronic sound drizzle that surround his music, a system of underground tunnels reveals itself, overlapping neatly stratified layers of sound. One can recognise here a connoisseur of the methods used by the two Richards, Wagner and Strauss. There is nothing hazy or soft about this music that is permeated by a secret network of polyphonic mazes in which Philippe Manoury, like a jealous Minotaur, divests us of Ariadne’s thread.”
Télérama, Gilles Macassar, 24/09/2014, article on the occasion of the French premiere of In situ at Musica Strasbourg in September 2014
“[…] in 2012 Philippe Manoury wrote very finely chiselled music in his Melencolia (d’après Dürer). Structured by the sound of bells, new and interesting sounds are produced. Suspense is guaranteed – Philippe Manoury retains it, almost casually, over the course of 40 minutes.”
Schweizer Musikzeitung, Torsten Möller, June 2014 on Melencolia (d’après Dürer), String Quartet No. 3
“The French composer Philippe Manoury […] is after substantial musical gestures and direct expression. Although Manoury is fond of large romantic gestures, he went on to find his own singular voice in the realm of chamber music and live electronics. There is a lot going on in 'Le temps, mode d’emploi' (2014) for two pianos and live electronics [...]. Above all, the way the multiple live electronics interact with the two pianists is masterfully programmed; the polyphony of time that is produced is so invigorating that the time just flies by.”
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Alfred Zimmerlin, 14/05/2014
“Manoury, born in 1952, can be placed alongside the likes of Tristan Murail and Pascal Dusapin as one of the most influential French contemporary composers. Concealed behind his 'Zones de turbulences', which received its world premiere by the Musica Viva, is a concerto for two pianos after the classic model. [...] His concerto for two pianos is an ingenious work, so full of secrets that one immediately wants to listen to it again. It references French models in its highly sensitive sound. But its sensuality comes above all from the fact that it is so carefully constructed.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Michael Stallknecht, 16/12/2013
"Réseaux" & "Dérèglements" (2022, Concours international de piano d'Orléans- Lorenzo Soulès)
Fanfare (2020, Brass section Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, François-Xavier Roth)
B-Partita for violin, ensemble and electronic (Ashot Sarkissjan, Ensemble Remix, Peter Rundel, Worten Digitópia)
État d'alerte for two percussionists and orchestra (2015, KrausFrink, Deutsche Radiophilharmonie Saarbrücken, Peter Rundel)
Hommage à Richter I, 6 Bagatelles (Jean-François Heisser)
Les éléments qui forment la musique de nos jours - Philippe Manoury
L'invention de la musique - Philippe Manoury
Vorspiel Lab.Oratorium (Rinnat Moriah, Tora Augestad, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, François-Xavier Roth)
Melencolia, 3. Streichquartett (Arditti Quartet)
Philippe Manoury - Fragments pour un portrait
Philippe Manoury - Partita I
Philippe Manoury: Le temps, mode d'emploiGrau Schumacher PianoDuo; SWR Experimentalstudio; José Miguel Fernandez & Dominik Kleinknecht, KlangregisseurNEOS 11802, 2019
Philippe Manoury: Le Livre des Claviers, MétalThird Coast PercussionNew Focus Recordings, fcr187, 2017
Philippe Manoury: In Situ für Orchester und EnsembleEnsemble Modern; SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg; François-Xavier Roth, DirigentNEOS 11411-14, 2014
Philippe Manoury: Fragments d'Héraclite, Inharmonies, Slova, Trakl Gedichteaccentus; Laurence Equilbey, DirigentinNaive, V5217, 2011