Joel-Francois Durand in the Mirror Land

Melody—Three Situations: Un Feu distinct, La Terre et le feu, Athanor (2004)

Download PDF (841.5 KB)
pp. 89-138

While it might seem a bit anachronistic to discuss the topic of melody in these early years of the twenty-first century, long after the demise of the harmonic functions that supported tonal music, and also a good while after the violent rejection of melodic writing in the...

On Some Aspects of the Piano Concerto: Time as Generator of Space through Melody and Harmony (1996)

Download PDF (597.4 KB)
pp. 139-152

In the course of musical history, the concerto for soloist and orchestra, as a form, has witnessed the progressively stronger imposition of a certain type of dramatic conception, owing to the large potential for musical and extramusical relationships between the soloist, perceived as an individual, and the surrounding instrumental mass. This development...

In the Mirror Land: Version for Flute and Oboe (2003)

Download PDF (523.0 KB)
pp. 153-162

Centers, Fields, and Cracks: Some Solutions to the Problems of Contemporary Composition in the Music of Joël-François Durand

Download PDF (430.3 KB)
pp. 173-182

No one who has been an active participant in the creation, performance, or study of contemporary music, in this new century or in the previous one, has escaped the debate over its accessibility and relevance. This debate, like an invasive undergrowth, infests every forum for new music: its tangles have ensnared, agitated, and sometimes enraged...

“As if to illustrate the process of creation itself”: Joël-François Durand’s Lichtung

Download PDF (717.1 KB)
pp. 183-210

Written in 1986–7 for string quartet with alto flute, clarinet, horn, trumpet, piano, and contrabass on commission from the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Lichtung is one of a series of compositions that Durand wrote during the years 1984–91 exploring the dynamics of...

Durand, Bernhard, and Form

Download PDF (722.4 KB)
pp. 211-246

The relationship between literature and music has a venerable place in Western cultural history, but it is only in relatively recent times that it has received sustained attention from either artists or critics, in detailed or appreciably technical terms. That there are by now so many examples to be cited of the impact that a novel, play, poem, or philosophical treatise has had on a musical...