Aperghis

The son of a father/sculptor and a mother/painter, Georges Aperghis hesitated for a long time between painting and composing. Essentially self-taught, he discovered music on the radio and in the piano lessons he took with a family friend. He settled in Paris in 1963, was introduced to the Domaine Musical's serialism, Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry's concrete music, and Iannis Xenakis research, which inspired his first works, then, in 1970, he decided to explore a freer and more personal language.

In 1971, he composed his first piece of musical theater, The Tragic History of the Necromancer Heronimo and his Mirror (for two female voices: sung and spoken, a lute, and a cello), prefiguring his musical dramaturgy in which the music is tightly bound to the text and the stage.

From 1976 on, Georges Aperghis created the Atem (Theater and Music Atelier), devoted to musical theater, where he completely renewed his compositional practice. He called upon musicians and actors, integrated all vocal, instrumental, gestural, and scenographic ingredients into his plays by treating them identically. He also composed pieces for single instruments, chamber music, vocals, for the orchestra and operas.

He synthesized his work in the opera, where the text is the unifying and determining element, and the voice the principal vector of expression. He composed seven lyric works, summing up his work as "making music of everything."