STÉPHANE DELPLACE (1953)

A contemporary of nobody (by Grégoire Hetzel ) 

The seeming pain of dissonance, the beauty of linear conflict between voices, the harmonies and disharmonies that they create never cease to fascinate him. His discovery of Bach’s Fantasy in G major for organ is a definitive turning point.  Delplace relentlessly deepens his mastery of composition and attends the Conservatoire National de Musique de Paris, where he studies counterpoint, harmony, fugue, and orchestration.  But, as he readily admits, it is through studying the works of the composers he most admires (Bach, Brahms, Ravel...) that he shapes his musical persona.

In the early nineteen-eighties, while harmonizing the whole tone scale in opposition to the modal debussy-esque solution, he discovers a singular tonal harmonic configuration out of which many of his works were born, such as the oratorio De Sibilla (adapted from Virgil), premiered in Saint-Germain des Prés in 1990, as well as the Prelude et Fugue VI in B flat minor.  Comforted by the idea that tonal language has not been exhausted of its possibilities, the composer henceforth looks for the expressive force of clear compositional language, while always being careful not to sacrifice himself to any form of progressivism.  The Klavierstücke for piano (1995-99, ed. Esching), the double concerto Laus Vitae (1998), the Tombeau de Ravel, for full orchestra (1997), Odi et Amo (adapted from Catulle) or the Variations dans le Ton de Sol for solo cello (1995), to cite only a few of his works, all share the quest for harmonically painful beauty and for the counterpoint that it subjugates.  Several obsessions haunt these works which are true examples of the author’s language:  The alteration of weak scale degrees, brought out as if Delplace, without leaving the tonal ‘solar system’, wished to explore the farthest most planets, or as if he wanted to visit the ”geography of those well known lands whose basements are still left unexploited.”

Another element interests him: Theme, the original idea, out of which everything flows naturally without divulging where it will take the composer, and that the contrapuntal and harmonic lines adopt and nourish.  “After having found a musical idea, I have only to withdraw myself, I let the emotional and artistic material exhaust the substance of my idea, and I am under the illusion that my solution is the one that anybody would have chosen.  For me, the important thing is to go further, not to invent new formulas.”  Delplace likes to cite Cioran, whose phrases ‘tender geometry’ or ‘exercise on a metaphysical background’ as applied to Bach, suit him as well, and particularly apply to his Trente Preludes & Fugues.