Georges Aperghis

Born in 1945 and resident in Paris since 1963, Georges Aperghis has been internationally renowned for three decades both as a contemporary composer of singular importance and as a music theater pioneer.

With over a hundred works to his name, he continues to channel his unflagging creativity into expanding an entirely personal oeuvre which, defying conventional methodological and aesthetic categorization, forges new genres and opens up audiences and performers alike to an unprecedented stylistic freedom in which visual/representative and auditory elements are artfully combined.

Having composed his first work for the music theater, "La tragique histoire du nécromancien Hiéronimo et de son miroir", in 1971, Aperghis embarked on an exploration of the relationship between music, the spoken word and on-stage actions which made him a central figure in the developments set in motion by the Festival d’Avignon.

It was in this context that he founded the "Theatre and Music Workshop" in 1976 where, collaborating with musicians and actors, he experimented with new compositional methods in which the human voice, instruments and representational elements contribute to the dramaturgy of a work on an equal footing. This theatrical/representational element also seeped into his instrumental and vocal/instrumental works, the most significant of which will feature in this portrait.

The composer often approached the genre as an instrumental music theater in which the instrumentalists can contribute to the on-stage action, even if only with simple gestures. The composer’s desire to experiment and to challenge is also evident in his unusual and antithetical sound combinations which take instruments and voices to the very limits of their range and abilities. In his stage works, Aperghis often seeks the active participation of the audience in an effort to remove the barriers that may impede their communicating with contemporary music.