Tuesday Feb 2  Mark Hutchinson  (York St John University)    4pm Rymer Auditorium

Tracing the night sky: coherent constellations in Dutilleux’s Ainsi la nuit

The centenary year of the French composer Henri Dutilleux (1916–2013) provides an ideal opportunity to look again at his music, which deserves wider attention. His longevity allowed him to stand as a bridge between pre- and post-war French musical life; his music combines an awareness of this tradition with generous doses of the ‘levain de l’étranger’ provided by diverse and international literary, visual and poetic influences. This seminar will explore the various compositional and aesthetic threads that animate the string quartet Ainsi la nuit (1973–6), to be performed by Quatuor Diotima on February 17th. In particular, I will look at Dutilleux’s use of sonority, connections of material, and manipulations of memory to create a musical ‘constellation’ that knits together influences from music, literature and the visual arts into a coherent whole.