Tristan Murail

Tristan Murail is one of France's most prominent contemporary composers. Murail entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1967 and studied composition with Olivier Messiaen. In 1973, he and a group of other young musicians founded the Ensemble Itinéraire, widely known not only for performances but for research in live electronics and modes of instrumental performance. Murail taught at the IRCAM institute from 1991 to 1997, where he was part of the team that developed Patchwork composition software. He has written large orchestral works -- Gondwana, from 1980, has been widely performed -- as well as three concertos, many chamber and ensemble works (some of them with electronics), and choral music. Many of Murail's instrumental works use the spectral composition technique, in which properties of sound become the basis for harmony and polyphony. Some 50 of his works had been recorded as of the early 2020s.