In 1983, I spent a few weeks in Paris on a French government scholarship to meet some of the major composers living in the city and record interviews with them for the three-questions project. My mastery of the language was shaky to say the least but I was helped by an interpreter. Her presence gave me confidence but I only asked her to translate when I did not understand a particular word or sentence. I was anxious not to interrupt the interview if I could help it. This explains why the conversations with French composers are mostly monologues; I only asked questions when absolutely necessary, since the three basic ones were known anyway.

A contemporary of Milton Babbitt, Henri Dutilleux has chosen a different path in that his music is rooted in the tradition of twentieth-century French music, mainly Debussy, Ravel, and Roussel. His output is not large but what he has produced in the way of orchestral music is played with some regularity, especially Timbres, espace, mouvement ou “La nuit etoilée” (1977/78) and the cello concerto Tout un monde lointain (1967/70).

I.

No, frankly, I do not think that my evolution would have ever been determined by the shock caused by listening to any particular composition. Of course, since reaching the age when I was able to write music, that is, since I was fifteen, there have been some works which have impressed me a great deal, but my style has developed gradually, without any reverses, I should think.

I must say: on hearing Pierrot lunaire, I met with a world which struck me as wholly alien and new, unrelated to anything else. All in all, I think I must have felt very much like musicians well before my time (like Stravinsky or Ravel) when they encountered Pierrot lunaire for the first time: it was for me, just as it must have been for them, a veritable mirage.

As it was indeed also for Dallapiccola and Puccini.

Indeed. If we think of the musicians of the Second Viennese School, the pupils of Schoenberg, like Berg (especially Wozzeck which impressed me no end), possessed an idiom that influenced me through its novelty. Webern also, but in a different fashion: it was, I think, his rarefied sound world and the rarefied form of his music that left a trace on my thinking.