Henri Dutilleux’s position in French music was proudly solitary. Between Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez in age, he was little affected by either, though he took an interest in their work. Ravel, Roussel, Bartok, and Stravinsky clearly mattered to him, as did big-band music. But his voice, marked by sensuously handled harmony and color, was his own. Dutilleux was a moderate modernist. While he gradually moved away from regular tonality in favor of a richer harmony, he maintained a powerful sense of direction. In form, too, his music evolved, from closed and abstract symphonic patterns to open-ended, atmospheric stretches within a continuous unfolding of melodic transformation. “I can understand why the young musicians of the next generation wanted more rigor, but things went too far,” he told The New York Times in 1986, referring to Boulez and his modernist disciples. “I don’t support aesthetic terrorism.” He composed slowly and with periods of reflection, devoting himself primarily to orchestral music. Though he exerted himself in Parisian musical life as a teacher, radio administrator and concertgoer, his aesthetic reserve seemed to carry over into his personal life. He remained somewhat aloof from Paris society. The apartment he shared with his wife, the pianist Geneviève Joy, was set apart on the Île Saint-Louis, the exclusive enclave in the middle of the Seine. Dutilleux was notably associated with the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, for whom he wrote a cello concerto. And when Rostropovich requested a work for the National Symphony, of which he had become conductor, Dutilleux responded with Timbres, Espace, Mouvement(1977), an impression of van Gogh’s painting “Starry Night” for an orchestra without violins or violas. His subject was the capacity of art to integrate humanity into the cosmos. “I have a great need of religion,” van Gogh’s words sing out in this lustrous score, “so I go out at night to paint the stars.” In a 1986 interview, Dutilleux acknowledged that he was not as prolific a composer as some of his contemporaries. “I know one’s work isn’t judged by the number of pounds the scores weigh,” he said, “but all the same, I hope I have enough years left to work and to produce more, because I really feel I haven’t written enough.”

 

—Paul Griffiths