Michaël Lévinas (born 18 April 1949) is a French composer and pianist.

Biography

Born in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, Levinas was a student of

Olivier Messiaen Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...

at the

Conservatoire de Paris The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...

. As an interpreter he made several recordings, mostly for Adès. Amongst these are works by

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

, Fauré,

Scriabin Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (; russian: Александр Николаевич Скрябин ; – ) was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. Before 1903, Scriabin was greatly influenced by the music of Frédéric Chopin and composed ...

Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wor ...

, and the complete

Well-Tempered Clavier ''The Well-Tempered Clavier'', BWV 846–893, consists of two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys for keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach. In the composer's time, ''clavier'', meaning keyboard, referred to a variety of in ...

J.S. Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late baroque music, Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suite ...

. His father was the philosopher

Emmanuel Levinas Emmanuel Levinas (; ; 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work within Jewish philosophy, existentialism, and phenomenology, focusing on the relationship of ethics to me ...

and he is married to philosopher and musicologist

Danielle Cohen-Levinas Danielle Cohen-Levinas (born 21 April 1959 in Paris) is a French philosopher, musicologist, and a specialist of Jewish philosophy. Biography A pianist by training and former graduate of the Conservatoire de Paris, Danielle Cohen-Levinas followe ...

Selected works

: Lévinas' scores are largely published by Éditions

Salabert Francis Salabert (born François-Joseph-Charles Salabert, 27 July 1884 – 28 December 1946) was an innovative and influential French music publisher, who was the head of Éditions Salabert in the first half of the twentieth century. Biography ...

, Éditions

Henry Lemoine Henry Lemoine (21 October 1786 – 18 May 1854) was a French music publisher, composer, and piano teacher. Life Lemoine was born in Paris, where he was a pupil of Anton Reicha, a composer and piano teacher. In 1816 he took over his father An ...

, Éditions Musicales Transatlantiques. * ''Arsis et Thésis'' for flute (1971) * ''Clov et Hamm'' for trombone, tuba, percussion and magnetic tape (1973) * ''Appels'' for 11 instruments (1974) * ''Froissements d'ailes'' for flute (1975) * ''Ouverture pour une fête étrange'' for 2 orchestras and electroacoustic device (1979) * ''Concerto pour piano espace #2'' (1980) * ''Les rires de Gilles'' for 5 instrumentalists and tape (1981) * ''Arcades'' for viola and piano (1982) * ''Arcades II for viola and 12 instruments (1982) * ''La conférence des oiseaux'', after a Persian tale of

Attar Attar or Attoor ( ar, عطار, ) may refer to: People *Attar (name) *Fariduddin Attar, 12th-century Persian poet Places *Attar (Madhya Pradesh), the location of Attar railway station, Madhya Pradesh, India *Attar, Iran, a village in Razavi Kho ...

(1985) * ''La cloche fêlée'' for orchestra and electroacoustic device (1988) * ''Voûtes'' for 6 percussionists (1988) * ''Préfixes'' for 17 instrumentalists and electroacoustic device (1991) * ''Rebonds'' for sextet and electroacoustic device (1993) * ''Go-gol'', Opera in 2 acts to a libretto by Frédéric Tristan after the stories of

Gogol Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; uk, link=no, Мико́ла Васи́льович Го́голь, translit=Mykola Vasyliovych Hohol; (russian: Яновский; uk, Яновський, translit=Yanovskyi) ( – ) was a Russian novelist, ...

(1996)Composer un opéra aujourd'hui: Actes de la journée d'étude du 13 ... - Page 86 Béatrice Ramaut-Chevassus - 2003 "À présent, les synthétiseurs et les effets acousmatiques sont rois: dans Go-gol (1995-1996) - écrit d'après deux nouvelles de Gogol18 -, le compositeur Michaël Lévinas a synthétisé à loisir diverses classes de modèles de résonance afin que ..." * ''Les Lettres enlacées II: Fragments d'une lettre'' for viola solo (2000) * ''Les nègres'', Opera in 3 acts on '' Les Nègres'' of

Jean Genet Jean Genet (; – ) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels ''The Thief's ...

(2003) * ''Les Lettres enlacées V'' for 2 violas (2006) * ''La Métamorphose'', after ''

Metamorphosis Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops including birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation. Some inse ...

'' of

Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typ ...

(2011)

Selected bibliography

* Pierre Albert Castanet, Muriel Joubert (eds.): ''La Musique de Michaël Lévinas. Vers de contrepoints irréels'' (Château-Gontier: Éditions Aedam musicae, 2020), .

References

External links

Michaël Lévinas biography and works at Éditions Henry Lemoine

His website
in French 1949 births 21st-century classical composers 20th-century French male classical pianists 21st-century French composers 21st-century French male classical pianists Academic staff of the Conservatoire de Paris Conservatoire de Paris alumni French classical composers 20th-century French Jews French male classical composers French people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent Jewish classical composers Jewish classical pianists Living people Musicians from Paris {{France-composer-stub