Philippe Schœller was born in France on April 13, 1957. His style could be associated with terms such as color, transparency, fine energy and subtlety, as well as abundant energy, suppleness, movement and organic form. From extremely pared-down solo works, such as the pure Hypnos Linéa he composed for Pierre Hamon’s baroque flute, to large-scale orchestral works such as his Totems, his writing testifies to a high level of attention to detail, to the life of the instrumental gesture, as well as to a certain quest for vertigo characteristic of Philippe Schœller’s passion for what he calls “textural perceptions”: waves, the flow of wind in reeds and forests, flights of starlings, clouds and galaxies of events in the permanent spectacle of living Nature. This passion for perception, put into perspective, is based on a quest for perfection, even extreme simplicity, where the ear opens up, awakens and lights up, endlessly alert.

He is the author of over 84 works performed in Europe, Russia, New York, San Francisco and Japan. From an early age, he received a solid traditional musical training: piano with Jean-Claude Henriot, choral singing in Justus von Websky’s Bach Choir, harmony & counterpoint with Béatrice Berstel, introduction to conducting at the École Normale de Musique (Paris) with Gérard Dervaux, analysis with Robert Piencikowski.

From 1982 to 1986, he attended Pierre Boulez’s classes at the Collège de France in Paris, as well as Franco Donatoni’s master classes at the Paris Conservatoire, and Iannis Xenakis’s free classes at the École des Hautes Études, also in Paris. His most memorable encounters, however, were a dialogue with Helmut Lachenmann at a conference in Paris in 1985, his first meeting with Henri Dutilleux in Tours in 1990, and a meeting with Elliot Carter in 1983. Philippe Schœller also enriched his musical training by studying Musicology. In the 80s and 90s, he won the Antidogma (Turin 1984) and Henri Dutilleux (Tours 1990) international composition competitions. Philippe Schœller was the first laureate composer of the prestigious Fondation Natixis/Banque Populaire/Crédit National (1993-1997). In 2001, he was elected “Composer in Residence” by the Philharmonic Orchestra of the BeethovenHalle in Bonn, Germany. For his work Totems, he received the Grand Prix Paul Gilson in 2001, awarded unanimously by Canadian, Swiss, French and Belgian radio stations. In January 2003, he was selected from over 900 scores to take part, along with nine other composers, in the semi-finals of the Masterprize, in London, for his work Totems. He gives numerous lectures (Lausanne: École Polytechnique Fédérale, École des Beaux-Arts d’Angers, École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles, École Centrale de Massy Palaiseau) and has also taught analysis and composition at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon, as well as directing master-classes at Ircam (2005), the National Conservatory of Copenhagen (2004) and the Hochschule Hannover (2004). He also attended the computer music course at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique Musique, in Paris), before carrying out important work on “sound synthesis” there, and then organizing various master-classes for young composers in residence/cursus. The aim of his work was to develop, with the tools available at the Institute, a new, digital lutherie, in tune with the times, but also – and above all – in harmony and continuity with traditional lutherie, the artisanal part of the orchestra. In this way, this “digital lutherie” attempts to achieve the same perfection and exacting standards to which the instrumentarium of our age-old orchestral tradition responds.

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