- Pierre Villette
Pierre Villette (1926–1998) was a French composer of choral and instrumental music.
Villette was born into a musical family in 1926. He studied with
Maurice Duruflé before attending theParis Conservatoire .Pierre Boulez was a fellow student but their careers followed very different paths. In 1957 Villette was appointed director of the Conservatoire inBesançon , the capital of theFranche-Comté region. He was dogged by ill health and had a lung removed while still in his twenties. His bad health forced him to move from mountainousBesançon to a warmer climate, and he became director of the Academy atAix en Provence in 1967. He held this position until he retired in 1987, and he continued to live inProvence until his death in 1998.Villette's music is a product of a French musical heritage that includes Fauré and Debussy as well as Poulenc and Messiaen, and a French cultural legacy that includes
Catholicism and theOrder of Saint Benedict . Villette was not interested in the avant-garde direction taken by Boulez's circle, and instead his music drew on influences as eclectic asGregorian Chant ,medieval music ,jazz (he composed an orchestral piece titled "Blues"), and Stravinsky. His catalogue has eighty-one opus numbers, (full list via [http://www.musimem.com/villette.htm this link] ) and he wrote chamber and orchestral music as well as better-known choral works.Villette's compositions are performed around the world. His choral music was championed in
England by Dr Donald Hunt in the 1970s when he was director ofWorcester Cathedral Choir, and Villette's "Hymne à la vierge", which is probably his best-known work, has been performed in the annual Service of Nine Lessons and Carols atKing's College, Cambridge . Choirs in the US, Japan, and Germany are also familiar with Villette's compositions. Strangely, however, he has never been widely performed in his native France, probably because he held regional positions in a country where artistic life is dominated byParis .
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