Philippe Manoury

Philippe Manoury (born 19 June 1952) is a French composer.

Biography

Manoury was born in Tulle and began composition studies at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris with Gérard Condé and Max Deutsch. He continued his studies from 1974 to 1978 at the Conservatoire de Paris with Michel Philippot, Ivo Malec, and Claude Ballif. In 1975, he undertook studies in computer assisted composition with Pierre Barbaud, and joined IRCAM as a composer and electronic music researcher in 1980. From 2004 until 2012, Manoury served on the composition faculty at the University of California, San Diego, where he taught composition, electronic music, and analysis in the graduate program. After retiring from teaching at UCSD, he currently lives in Strasbourg, France.

Music

Manoury's work is strongly influenced by Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis, and his early work from 1972–76 combines serial punctualism with the densely massed elements characteristic of the music of Stockhausen and Xenakis, and the paintings of Jackson Pollock. Works such as Sound and Fury are of interest because of the use of computer-assisted composition. Sound and Fury also uses a very large orchestra, which is symmetrically disposed, and makes quite extensive use of left-right spatial effects.