Philippe Hurel

A synthesis of diverse influences

Philippe Hurel’s richly layered music embodies the aesthetic pluralism of his era. Over the past four decades, he has produced more than seventy works, for forces that range from a single instrument to chamber group, full orchestra, and electronics. What holds this varied catalogue together is not a fixed style but a method: each piece tests, reconfigures, and develops the materials of the last. In this way, Hurel continually extends the thread of his artistic vision, developing it through variation rather than repetition.

His early formation reflects a similarly wide field of reference. From Iannis Xenakis, he took a fascination with orchestral sound as evolving mass. He also passed through the rigorous lens of second-generation serialism, completing an analytical study of Pierre Boulez’s music, for which he earned an honors degree in analysis. At the same time, he moved beyond the academy and fed his interest in late-twentieth-century jazz, performing on electric guitar and violin in semi-professional settings, and drawing inspiration from artists such as Michael Brecker, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, John Scofield, and Mike Stern.¹

Another equally formative influence was spectralism. Hurel credits Gérard Grisey and particularly his notion of the “liminal” (from the Latin limen, meaning “threshold”), in the sense of music’s parts existing between sound dimensions. For Grisey, composing involved forging hybrid sounds that hover between harmony and timbre, or between harmonic and inharmonic states.

Hurel embraces Grisey’s approach: “All the intermediaries I build between chord and aggregate, polyphonies and timbre, tempered and non-tempered, are by nature ambiguous because they are simultaneously linked to both states, which they are responsible for connecting.”² He recognizes the potential to expand this approach beyond the liminal spaces explored by the first generation of spectral composers. In his eyes, “spectral music is not a sealed technique, but an attitude.”³

His goal became to bring diverse musical elements into a unified whole where interrelationship would take precedence over respective individual traits. Through this, he could explore the multiple thresholds that exist both within a single piece and across an entire body of work.

Computer-assisted composition entered Hurel’s work in 1984 with the original version of Opcit for tenor saxophone. Ever since, it has enabled him to calibrate with great precision the many ways one musical source can be transformed into another. As Philippe Leroux explains,

in an era of music history when what has value as a musical idea is no longer defined solely by melody or rhythm, but by all sorts of different objects […], process becomes one of the surest ways of ensuring unity within a work made up of different elements. It allows any element to be integrated into the musical discourse, since it assures logical continuity and a network of complex interrelations that shape the contours of the piece.⁴

In this light, computer-assisted composition, with its algorithmic writing processes, offers one of the most effective ways to unify materials of highly disparate natures.

Spectral composers first derived their harmonic materials by simulating natural spectra, later expanding to artificial spectra, notably those obtained through ring modulation, a technique inaugurated by Grisey’s Partiels (1975).⁵ Working within a complex harmonic language, Hurel combined an extensive range of spectral manipulations with layered rhythmic figures. He achieved the gradual transition from one motif to another through calculating — either manually or by computer — relationships between rhythmic layers.

For example, early sketches of Tombeau in memoriam Gérard Grisey (for piano and percussion, 1999) show a handwritten rhythm composed intuitively, over which Hurel layered computer-generated harmonic structures. These were created by simulating frequency modulation and using chord “interpolation”: the transformation of one chord into another over a defined number of steps.⁶

Musical time: between continuity and rupture

In Grisey’s early works, process “ceaselessly, inexorably transforms a musical situation into another, unable to come to rest on either of them.”⁷ Hurel, by contrast, injected “repetitions, loops, and backtracking in large linear processes.”⁸ This approach causes a different kind of threshold: “a play between anticipations and about-faces resembling cinematographic flashbacks.”⁹ Examples can be heard in … à mesure (for six instruments, 1996) and the orchestral work Flash-Back (1997-1998).

Manipulating time has remained foundational in Hurel’s practice. In his 2014 opera Les Pigeons d’Argile, the musical structure mirrors the temporal design of Tanguy Viel’s libretto. Hurel explored time in a particularly striking way in a 1991 ensemble piece Six miniatures en trompe-l’œil, which can be performed in two different orders: 1-2-3-4-5-6 or 1-4-2-5-3-6. The first order produces a series of seemingly independent miniatures, each ending in material different from what begins the next. The second creates continuous evolution, where the beginning of each miniature grows out of the ending of the one preceding it.

To break the seamless, continuous evolution typical in first-generation spectral music, Hurel reduced the number of elements in a piece to make them easier to perceive. In Loops III, a piece for two flutes (2003),

a few identifiable loops organize the structure of the piece and its transformations by undergoing a kind of morphing; as varied as they might be, they do not always bring us to the same place. While the music seems to be in constant evolution, the steps it follows are always the same. This is the paradox on which the piece is built.¹⁰

A similar economy of contrasting materials emerges in Tour à tour, a triptych for orchestra composed between 2008 and 2012. It grows from a single “generative cell” — a “Gestalt,” in the sense that Grisey used the term when describing his 1996 piece Vortex Temporum¹¹ — which serves as the wellspring for the piece’s construction and development. In this respect, it recalls the processes of thematic transformation found in Classical and Romantic music, particularly in the work of Beethoven and Wagner, both major influences on Hurel.¹²

Thresholds of perception

Hurel’s experiments with the threshold between linear evolution, anticipation, and rupture led him to create degrees of depth within a piece’s form, an approach that opened yet another kind of threshold. For him, this meant “establishing different levels of listening, the first of which — the one that allows listeners to enter the piece — is generally the simplest.”¹³

The elements of a work can either fuse together or break apart, as in Pour l’image (1986-1988), an ensemble piece that traces “a trajectory alternating between global and differentiated perception.”¹⁴ This exploration of perceptual thresholds grew from his study of Stephen MacAdams’s work on musical perception and cognition.¹⁵

Similarly, Leçon de choses (for ensemble and electronics, 1993) refers to the eponymous work by Claude Simon “in which several seemingly autonomous and heterogeneous narratives cross-pollinate […] and ultimately create a narrative situation that, if not entirely comprehensible, is at least completely unified at the level of perception.”¹⁶ Reading Simon’s book inspired Hurel to compose following a process he described as “cross-pollination.” Used for the first time in the 1981 work Trames for eleven stringed instruments, this process plays with the threshold between clearly discernable musical situations, presented either in succession or simultaneously, and their gradual fusion. Initially heterogeneous materials “cross-pollinate” until they come to resemble one another, forming a single texture and unified structure.¹⁷

Hurel also explored boundaries between different types of compositional writing. In Pour Luigi (for five instruments, 1993-1994), the primarily rhythmic opening motif slowly transforms into “polyphony that, as it slows, undergoes, little by little, a process of erosion,” in which “the progressive disappearance of rhythmic and melodic elements […] gives way to writing that is essentially harmonic.”¹⁸

Hurel sometimes juxtaposed one type of writing and its opposite within the same piece. For example, a process might involve predetermined starting and arrival material, each composed ahead of time, which can be made to evolve progressively back and forth into each other; the last section of ...à mesure uses this type of predetermined process. Conversely, he might let the material evolve “toward unknown situations,” as in ...à mesure’s central passage, which he composed “as it went along.”¹⁹

Calculated elements might coexist with elements composed more intuitively, thus making Hurel’s process less predictable as it unfolds. This approach reveals a threshold between freedom and constraint. An example is Figures libres, for eight instruments (2000). Its title refers to the freedom a competitive athlete can carve out within the technical constraints of their sport. Similarly, Hurel shifted between rigorously calculated processes (rhythmic, harmonic, and others) and free composition. In so doing, he cultivated a perceptual ambiguity between music that is generated from constraints (computer or other) but sounds free, and music that is freely composed but seems shaped by constraint — influenced by Hurel’s use of computer-based methods.

Fusing thresholds

Often, multiple thresholds interact in Hurel’s music. For example, the principle of “cross-pollination,” which plays with separation and fusion, may itself form part of a predetermined process established before composition begins, as in parts two and three of Figures libres. Alternatively, it can appear within a more open process, as in Pas à pas, a 2015 piece for five instruments whose form Hurel “organized progressively, step by step.”²⁰

The Loops series of solo works occupies a distinct place in Hurel’s output. When he began the series, he considered it to be a laboratory for testing new compositional techniques.²¹ Each piece is based on a progressive transformation of sound elements derived almost exclusively from pitch, value, and articulation, and intentionally avoiding extended instrumental techniques.

By contrast, D’un trait (for solo cello, 2007) returns to the instrumental techniques characteristic of his early career pieces (notably Éolia, a work for solo flute written in 1981). However, such techniques are no longer treated as isolated objects; instead, Hurel integrates them into a broader context in constant evolution. D’un trait emerges from deliberately limited harmonic material and takes “intentionally contradictory pathways” to those of the Loops pieces. Created in close collaboration with cellist Alexis Descharmes, it is based on idiomatic instrumental gestures that “follow on one another, catapult off each other, and transform unpredictably.”²²

Hurel’s exploration of the threshold between overall and differentiated perception brought him to another boundary: between individualization and fusion in the relationship between solo instrumentalists and ensembles. His duet for piano and percussion Tombeau in memoriam Gérard Grisey plays with this idea, moving between the heterophonic fusion of the two instruments (at the beginning of the first movement) and their clear separation (at the beginning of the second movement).

In Quatre variations (1999-2000), he extends the solo percussion part through this same process of heterophonic composition, allowing the ensemble to both support and contrast with the soloist at different moments. This notion of avoiding a strict opposition between soloist and ensemble reappears in Aura (2005-2006), where the “degree of autonomy” of the solo piano part in relation to the orchestra can “vary depending on the situation.”²³ The same fluid relationship is present in Interstices (2009), where the piano alternates between playing as a soloist accompanied by three percussionists and fusing with them to create a single, unified timbre.²⁴ In Localized Corrosion (2009) and Global Corrosion (2016), two pieces written for saxophone, electric guitar, percussion, and piano, the electric guitar sometimes disappears into the group’s sound, and other times stands out sharply, like in an electric guitar solo in a rock band.

Hurel has long been drawn to the shifting threshold between simplicity and complexity, a line he first approached through the idea that music can be heard on multiple levels at once. He returned to this idea in comparing and contrasting degrees of complexity. Here, the threshold is between dense, richly textured passages on the one hand and passages that are deliberately reduced and minimalist on the other. In the coda of the final movement of Trois études mécaniques (for ensemble, 2003-2004), for example,

the choice of the octave as the interval between the voices, the abandonment of micro-intervals, and doubled instrumentation contribute to this ‘opening toward simplicity and clarity,’ following several minutes in which the spectral harmony is maintained in its deliberate complexity.²⁵

Exploring new thresholds with electronics

To the many interacting thresholds in his works, Hurel added electronics, situated at the threshold between actual sound synthesis and the simulation of synthesized sound through computer-generated harmonic composition performed by instrumentalists. In Diamants imaginaires, diamant lunaire (for ensemble and electronics, 1984), the synthesizer can serve a dual role. It can function “as a generator of acoustic models that the orchestra can simulate (in this case, the synthesizer absorbs the orchestra), or as a traditional instrument — for example, percussion (here, the synthesizer is absorbed by the orchestra[...]).”²⁶

In Phasis (2007-2008), Hurel explored the threshold between the sound of a solo saxophone and that of the accompanying ensemble. The multiphonics produced by the saxophone serve as models to shape the composition and guide an instrumental “resynthesis” by the ensemble.²⁷ In Loops III (2003), by contrast, the reference to synthesized sound is metaphorical. The decision to compose for two flutes was “dictated by the desire to make the two instruments play as if they were one,”²⁸ as though the sound of a single flutist had been enhanced and transformed by real-time electronic processing.

In Hurel’s music, an electronic part can accompany acoustic musicians, as in Plein-Jeu (for accordion and electronics, 2010), where each element of the electronic part, “while created at a different time, is the consequence of what the instrument plays, its extension.”²⁹ Conversely, musicians can also accompany an electronic part. In Leçon de choses, the electronic component involves sampled instrument sounds that the musicians cannot perform themselves because of too-rapid tempos or too-large intervals. Instead, the musicians play only a few notes, which are then elaborated into orchestration by the electronics.³⁰

Ambiguity between soloist and ensemble in Quatre variations is created by reference to electronics. The pieces switch between concerto grosso-style writing, in which the solo vibraphone player stands on equal footing with the two ensemble percussionists and the piano, and concertante writing in which the solo vibraphone part seems “augmented” by the two other percussion parts and the piano, as if it were the source of real-time electronic layers that extend its sound. In turn, these four instrumental parts seem “augmented” by the rest of the ensemble.

This type of threshold, between a solo part and an ensemble conceived in the spirit of mixed music, reappears in concertante works such as Phonus (for flute and orchestra, 2003-2004) and Aura (for piano and ensemble, 2005-2006). In Aura, for instance, an out-of-tune flute and clarinet reproduce the same melodic shape as the piano with a slight delay, creating the impression of an electronic echo. The same phenomenon reoccurs in Quelques traces dans l’air (a concerto for clarinet and orchestra, 2017-2018) and in Volutes (a concerto for oboe and orchestra, 2021). In each, the solo lines seem to be extended by real-time electronic processing — realized, however, by live instruments (two clarinets in the former and oboe in the latter).

The metaphorical threshold

Hurel’s newer pieces reflect on themes of grief and remembering the departed. In Quelques traces dans l’air, the naked exposure of each line creates space for echoes of memories seemingly erased by time — an evocative metaphor for the threshold between presence and absence.

He continued to explore the same idea in Ritual Trio (for three percussionists, 2018) and in So nah so fern I and II (2016-2022) (“So Close So Far” in German), two ensemble pieces Hurel describes as a synthesis of his entire musical language.³¹ These works bring together his core composition techniques: looping, backtracking, spectral manipulations, mathematically determined polyrhythms, both determined and open processes of progressive transformation, “cross-pollination,” and a wide range of instrumental techniques integrated into the process of composition and orchestration.

<sup>1. Personal conversation with Hurel. ↩
2. Guy Lelong, “Entretien avec Philippe Hurel,” Les cahiers de l’Ircam: Compositeurs d’aujourd’hui: Philippe Hurel, No. 5, March 1994, Ircam, Centre Pompidou, 1994. ↩
3. Philippe Hurel, “La musique spectrale… à terme!” (1998): http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/musique_spectrale.html. ↩
4. Philippe Leroux, “Intégrer la surprise — les processus dans Partiels de Gérard Grisey,” in Danielle Cohen-Lévinas (ed.), Le temps de l’écoute — Gérard Grisey, ou la beauté des ombres sonores, L’Harmattan and l’Itinéraire, 2004, p. 49. ↩
5. Pierre Rigaudière, “Gérard Grisey, Oeuvre,” in IRCAM’s BRAHMS database: https://brahms.ircam.fr/fr/gerard-grisey#parcours. ↩
6. Antoine Villedieu, “La place et le rôle de la Composition assistée par Ordinateur dans la musique de Philippe Hurel: Quels outils pour analyser des œuvres composées avec le recours à la CAO?,” master’s thesis, supervised by Jean-Marc Chouvel, Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, 2018. ↩
7. Jérôme Baillet, Gérard Grisey: fondements d’une écriture, L’Harmattan and L’Itinéraire, 2006, p. 65-67. ↩
8. Hurel, “La musique spectrale… à terme!” ↩
9. Philippe Hurel, program notes for … à mesure: http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/notices/amesure.html. ↩
10. Philippe Hurel, program notes for Loops III: http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/notices/loops3.html. ↩
11. Gérard Grisey, program notes for Vortex Temporum: https://brahms.ircam.fr/fr/works/work/8977/ (IRCAM BRAHMS database). ↩
12. ManiFeste 2015 Program: https://brahms.ircam.fr/en/works/work/32236/ (IRCAM BRAHMS database). ↩
13. Lelong, “Entretien avec Philippe Hurel.” ↩
14. Eurydice Jousse, program notes for Pour l’image: http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/notices/pourimage.html. ↩
15. Personal conversation with Philippe Hurel. ↩
16. Philippe Hurel, program notes for Pas à pas: http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/notices/pasapas.html. ↩
17. Idem. ↩
18. Philippe Hurel, program notes for Pour Luigi: http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/notices/luigi.html. ↩
19. Hurel, program notes for … à mesure. ↩
20. Hurel, program notes for Pas à pas. ↩
21. Personal conversation with Philippe Hurel. ↩
22. Philippe Hurel, program notes for D’un trait: http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/notices/duntrait.html. ↩
23. Philippe Hurel, program notes for Aura: http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/notices/aura.html. ↩
24. Philippe Hurel, program notes for Interstices: http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/notices/interstices.html. ↩
25. Philippe Hurel, program notes for Trois études mécaniques: http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/notices/etudesmecaniques.html. ↩
26. Philippe Hurel, program notes for Diamants imaginaires, diamant lunaire: http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/notices/diamants.html. ↩
27. Philippe Hurel, program notes for Phasis: http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/notices/phasis.html. ↩
28. Hurel, Program notes for Loops III. ↩
29. Philippe Hurel, program notes for Plein-Jeu: http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/notices/plein_jeu.html. ↩
30. Philippe Hurel, program notes for Leçon de choses: http://www.philippe-hurel.fr/notices/lesson.html. ↩
31. Personal conversation with Philippe Hurel. ↩</sup>