Pascal Dusapin Composer

Season 24/25 Artist

After an adolescence marked by a wide variety of musical worlds (Varèse, the organ, Bach, the Doors, free jazz, Beethoven, etc.), Pascal Dusapin studied with Iannis Xenakis from 1974 to 1978, who broadened his horizons to include mathematics and architecture. His first pieces, Souvenir du silence (1975) and Timée (1978), were written for Franco Donatoni and Hughes Dufourt.

In 1977, he won the Fondation de la Vocation prize and in 1981 the Villa Médicis prize, where he stayed for two years and wrote Tre Scalini, Fist, Quatuor n°1 and Niobé. In 1986, he met choreographer Dominique Bagouet and composed the ballet Assaï for his company. The same year, he began composing his first opera, in collaboration with writer Olivier Cadiot: Roméo & Juliette, performed in 1989 at the Opéra de Montpellier and the Festival d'Avignon. Medeamaterial, after Heiner Müller, premiered at La Monnaie in Brussels in 1991, To be sung, after Gertrude Stein, at Les Amandiers de Nanterre in 1994, and Perelà, Uomo di fumo, after Aldo Palazzeschi, at Opéra Bastille in 2003.

He wrote the libretto for his next two operas: Faustus, The Last Night premiered at Berlin's Staatsoper Unter der Linden in 2006 and Passion at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in 2008. Penthesilea, after Kleist, and Macbeth Underworld premiered successively in 2015 and 2019 at La Monnaie in Brussels. Pascal Dusapin has also written seven string quartets, several vocal works (including O Mensch!), solo piano pieces (including seven études) and a piano concerto, A Quia, as well as, from 1991 to 2009, a series of solos for orchestra: Go, Extenso, Apex, Clam, Exeo, Reverso and Uncut. A new cycle for orchestra is currently underway, inspired by nature; Morning in Long Island is the first part. In 2020, on the occasion of writer Maurice Genevoix's entry into the Pantheon, the President of the French Republic commissioned him to create a permanent work for the Pantheon: In Nomine Lucis. The 2021 edition of Radio France's Présences festival of musical creation is dedicated to him.