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Joël-François Durand, composer

BIOGRAPHY (en français)

Joël-François Durand was born in Orléans, France on 17 September 1954. He studied mathematics, musicology and piano in Paris, then composition with Brian Ferneyhough in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany (1981-84). In 1979 and 1983 he attended the composition courses of György Ligeti and Luciano Berio at the Centre Acanthes. In 1982 he was awarded a scholarship from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange). That same year he received a Darmstadt Institute Scholarship for his String Trio, and in 1983 his piano piece "...d'asiles déchirés..." was awarded a prize at the Third International K.H. Stockhausen Composition Competition in Brescia (Italy). He left Europe in 1984 to pursue a Ph.D. in Composition at the University of New York, Stony Brook (USA) where he studied with Bülent Arel and electronic music with Daria Semegen. He was awarded scholarships from the Fulbright Foundation in 1984 and from the French Ministery of Culture in 1985. He obtained the Ph.D. in 1988. He received the "Kranichsteiner Musikpreis" from the Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse in 1990. He has been teaching at the School of Music, University of Washington in Seattle, since 1991, where he is Professor of Composition. Starting in 2002, Durand is also Associate Director of the School of Music. As a guest composer and lecturer, Durand has contributed to the "Centre de la Voix" in Royaumont, France where he was co-director of the composition course in September 1993, the "Civica Scuola di Musica" in Milan, Italy (1995), the Royal Academy for Music in London, UK (1997), the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt (1984, 1990, 1992, 1994), the "VIII. Internationaler Meisterkurs für Komposition des Brandenburgischen Colloquiums für Neue Musik", Rheinsberg (1998), among others. In the Fall 1994 he was Visiting Assistant Professor in Composition at the University of California at San Diego. Durand is also Director of the Contemporary Group at the School of Music, University of Washington. Durand's music has been performed throughout Europe at a number of the most prestigious new music festivals: La Rochelle, Présences, Strasbourg, Darmstadt, Venice, as well as in the US and in South Korea, at the Pan Festival. He has received numerous commissions from the major European institutions, including the Ensemble Intercontemporain (Paris), the French Ministery of Culture, the IRCAM (Paris), the Strasbourg Festival "MUSICA" (France), the Ensemble "Contrechamps" (Geneva, Switzerland), Radio France. He has also published an extensive analysis of Jean Barraqué's Piano Sonata (Entretemps, 1987), and an essay on the music of Ruth Crawford Seeger ("Voix Nouvelles 92", Royaumont). Durand is listed in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

At first influenced by postwar European serialism, as in the early String Trio (1980-81), Durand quickly sought to distance himself from the system by developing an interaction between pre-determined compositional processes and more spontaneously derived musical elements. The pre-determined processes often serve to define the compositional environment of a whole piece, giving it a particular sound, for example, or basic temporal proportions. Within the constraints of these large scale organizations, a number of elements are often decided freely during the actual writing. These two tendencies are set up to establish a kind of dialog with each other, during the act of composition as well as in the musical result, so that their interaction creates a tension which the composer can use to carry the energy of the music. In works such as the Piano Concerto, Die innere Grenze, or Par le feu recueilli, this interaction creates a sense of conflict, and the dialog is one of dramatic opposition. In the dyptich L'exil du feu/Un feu distinct, there is no such opposition, as the two tendencies complement each other. The whole fabric is permeated by melodic lines derived from the original material through a rigorous method of spatial projection. These lines are then subjected to quasi motivic techniques which allow the melodic elements to be readily recognized even when their intervallic or rhythmic content is radically transformed.

In his works from the mid-80s and early 90s, Durand explored musical forms in which the original elements of a work were not presented until the very end, instead of the more traditional exposition at the beginning (as in the series: So er, Lichtung, Die innere Grenze, L'exil du feu, Un feu distinct; see in List of Works). This progressive unveiling of the work's origin supported the composer's interest in linear and directional developments, and in the melodic dimension of music. The focus on linearity emphasizes the role of musical works as journeys, in which the auditor is guided by the music through varying densities of light and darkness, as if on a forest path, toward a specific goal. The music becomes the medium in a task of discovery, of initiation. As a result his music of this period is often characterized with an intense, introspective lyricism.

Influences from extra-musical fields such as literature, poetry, or philosophy abound in his work and come to musical realization through abstract relations and intellectual re-evaluation. This distance is often mirrored in the titles of his works: titles essentially offer a poetic environment, without giving any direct key to the musical experience.