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Paul Méfano |
éditions musicales européennes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Born in 1937, Paul Méfano studied with A. Vaurabourg-Honegger, D. Milhaud and G. Dandelot at the Paris Conservatoire. He attended master-classes with P. Boulez, K. Stockhausen and H. Pousseur in Basel. He also attended the Domaine Musical concerts series and the Darmstadt conferences and studied with O. Messiaen at the CNSMP. His music was performed for the first time in 1965 at the Domaine Musical, under the direction of B. Maderna. From 1966 until 1968, he lived in the States then spent a year in Berlin at the invitation of the German Academy for Cultural Exchanges. Back in France in 1970, he devoted himself to composition and conducting and founded the Ensemble 2e2m in 1972. Director of the Champigny-sur-Marne Conservatoire (1972-1988), he later taught composition and orchestration at the CNSMP (1989-1995). He was appointed director of the Versailles CNR in September1996
Awards and disctinctions: Knight of the Ordre du Mérite (1980), Grand Prix National de la Musique (1982), Commander of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres (1985), SACEM Prize for symphonic music (1989).
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"Sometimes it is good to give one's taboos a hearty welcome and to invite them over" Starting from this little innocuous utterance, I explained the - here quite systematic - use of my intaglio-like aesthetics of the time, i.e. everything I usually refused and rejected in the course of my work. Here a few examples : the horn-trombone sextet is almost constantly homophonic, with frequent glissandi; preferred intervals are often contracted and move in a restricted ambitus, usually in the extreme low register; there are formants in which lines move, yet they themselves are static and dead; one of them is only one minute and thirty seconds long ! Microphones are used to distort rather than to amplify natural sounds. Moreover, although such occurences are rare, the performers sometimes sing, fool around with the poem, clap their hands, etc.; whereas my usual style appears only in brief parenthesis and polyphonies, reduced to fugitive quotations. The disposition in space is the following : the singer (basse-noble) stands on a one-meter-high cubic platform in the middle, facing the public; in front of him, three horns to his left and three trombones to his right in a V-shaped disposition. All around, forming a circle, six percussionists. At the far end of the stage, on the right hand side, standing on an approximately 30 cm- high platform: bassoon, tuba et contrabass (amplified through a mike put inside the body of the instrument in order to create a certain sound-distortion).
Artères végétales / Mains divisées / Filaments délictueux / Prodigue avarice du sol
Tronc / Ligne capillaire / Défie l'horizontale / Remou pétrifié
Fourches / Ramifiez / Creusez tissez le ciel
Forêts chantantes / En marche / Cathédrales de mes sommeils / Brûlés
Paul Méfano, about Lignes (1968) - Editions Salabert
For Paul Méfano to have remained so serene is indeed a miracle. It is due to his meekness, to his deeply humanistic attitude. Nothing ridiculous about it: he started out as a strict serialist. Then came the temptation of opulence, but always subtle, listening to his spectral cadets (research on the sound spectrum). And here is Paul Méfano, free at last, standing between, above, beyond, far from these two veins ! Not taking the easy way out, not regressing in the slightest way: on the contrary with a beautiful roughness, full of micro-intervals, of timbres, of monody and orientalism. And so much charm...
Jean Vermeil, CD-Répertoires, june 1996
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Ondes, espaces mouvants - Placebo Domino in Regione Vivorum - Mouvement Calme - A Bruno Maderna - Ensevelie - Voyager : CD 2e2m Collection 1006
Involutive - Estampes Japonaises - Paraboles - Interférences - Lignes - Signes / Oubli : CD 2e2m Collection 1007
Scintillante - Mémoire de la porte blanche - Asahi - Dragonbass - La matrice des vents - Périple à deux : CD 2e2m Collection 1012
une lecture
particulière de sept Valses d'Emile Waldteufel
Ensemble FA, dir. Dominique MY
Jade 198 478-2 (Universal)
Amour et
printemps / Roses et marguerites / Les Patineurs
Sirènes / Valse de la poupée / Violettes /
Madeleine
arrangements de Paul Méfano
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Editions
Salabert :
Captive, fl., 1962
Interférences, solo pno and hn + 10 instr., 1966
Involutive, cl., 1958
Lignes, bs. noble + 15 instr., 1962
Paraboles, sop. + ens., 1964
Traits suspendus, fl. octobass, 1980
