Paul Méfano

about

Paul Méfano (born 6 March 1937 in Basra, Iraq - died 15 September 2020 in Chilly-Mazarin), is a French composer and conductor. He pursued musical studies at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, and then later at the Paris Conservatory (CNSMP), where he was a student of Andrée Vaurabourg-Honegger, Darius Milhaud, and Georges Dandelot. He completed his studies in Basel at the courses taught by Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Henri Pousseur. Méfano’s compositional style has evolved considerably from his early serial work Incidences (1960) down to recent compositions which make extensive use of microtones, such as Speed (2000). His early serial style is clearly under the influence of Boulez, but the ardour of his employment of these traits “confounds the crystalline, the mirror-like and with it all suggestion of musical geometry” (Pugin 2000, 15). He has an essentially poetic conception of music, reflected in a lifelong interest in poets and poetry (Pugin 2000, 16). This is manifested especially in his treatment of instrumental color and in his vocal writing. He also has a special feeling for drama, as manifested in La cérémonie. At the beginning of the 1970s he experimented with electronics (La messe des voleurs), and with its real-time combination with instruments. Though he has shown interest in the music of the spectralist composers, his own compositions are not at all similar, and today he is regarded as a “post-spectralist” composer (Pugin 2001, 38). Many of h

top songs

albums

Valses

Mefano: Micromégas

20 ans de Musique Contemporaine a Metz (Digitally Remastered)

reed my mind

Micromégas

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Luftklang

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Micromegas

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Paul Méfano: Works - 1974-1989

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Paul Méfano

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Takemitsu

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Lefèbvre, Boulez, Méfano

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Boucourechliev: Ulysse / Jolas: Fusain / Méfano: Traits suspendus; Gradiva (Pierre-Yves Artaud)

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