Paul Méfano

Paul Méfano (born 6 March 1937 in Basra, Iraq), is a French composer and conductor.

Biography

Paul Méfano pursued musical studies at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, and then later at the Paris Conservatory (CNSMP), where he was a student of Andrée Vaurabourg-Honegger, Darius Milhaud, and Georges Dandelot. He completed his studies in Basel at the courses taught by Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Henri Pousseur.

He regularly attended the concerts of the Domaine Musical, as well as the seminars at Darmstadt, and enrolled in Olivier Messiaen’s class at the CNSMP. Messiaen described Méfano as "restless, intense, and always in search of radical solutions” (Pugin 2000, 15).

In 1965 his music was performed publicly for the first time, at the Domaine Musical under the baton of Bruno Maderna. From 1966 to 1968 he lived in the United States, and then in 1969 he moved to Berlin at the invitation of the German Academy of Cultural Exchange (DAAD).