Serge Nigg (6 June 1924 – 12 November 2008) was a French

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

, born in Paris.

Biography

After initial studies with Ginette Martenot, Nigg entered the

Paris Conservatory The Conservatoire de Paris (), or 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 Jean Ja ...

in 1941 and studied

harmony In music, harmony is the concept of combining different sounds in order to create new, distinct musical ideas. Theories of harmony seek to describe or explain the effects created by distinct pitches or tones coinciding with one another; harm ...

with

Olivier Messiaen Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithology, ornithologist. One of the major composers of the 20th-century classical music, 20th century, he was also an ou ...

and

counterpoint In music theory, counterpoint is the relationship of two or more simultaneous musical lines (also called voices) that are harmonically dependent on each other, yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. The term originates from the Latin ...

with Simone Plé-Caussade. In 1945, he met

René Leibowitz René Leibowitz (; ; 17 February 1913 – 29 August 1972) was a Polish and French composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher. He was historically significant in promoting the music of the Second Viennese School in Paris after the Second Wo ...

, who introduced him to the

twelve-tone technique The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition. The technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale ...

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography * Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include ...

. Together with other Leibowitz pupils, Antoine Duhamel, André Casanova and

Jean Prodromidès Jean Prodromidès (3 July 1927 – 17 March 2016) was a French composer. He was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1927 in a musical family. His father, who was of Greek origin, had a pianola by which Jean became familiar with works of Beethoven and Wagn ...

, he gave the first performance of Leibowitz's ''Explications des Metaphors'', Op. 15, in Paris in 1948. After completing a

Concerto A concerto (; plural ''concertos'', or ''concerti'' from the Italian plural) is, from the late Baroque era, mostly understood as an instrumental composition, written for one or more soloists accompanied by an orchestra or other ensemble. The ...

for

Piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

and Wind Instruments and a Concerto for Piano and

String Orchestra A string orchestra is an orchestra consisting solely of a string section made up of the bowed strings used in Western Classical music. The instruments of such an orchestra are most often the following: the violin, which is divided into first a ...

(both 1943), and the

symphonic poem A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single continuous movement, which illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source. The German term ( ...

''Timour'' (1944), he became the first French composer to write a dodecaphonic work when his Variations for Piano and 10 Instruments appeared in 1946. This piece was premiered at the International Festival of Dodecaphonic Music, organized by Leibowitz in 1947. In 1956, Nigg was appointed a member of the Music Committee for French state broadcasting. From 1967 to 1982, he was a member of the music management for the

French Ministry of Culture The Ministry of Culture () is the ministry (government department), ministry of the Government of France in charge of List of museums in France, national museums and the . Its goal is to maintain the French identity through the promotion and pro ...

, after which he taught classes in instrumentation and orchestration at the Paris Conservatory, and became President of the Société Nationale de Musique. He was elected to the

Académie des Beaux-Arts The (; ) is a French learned society based in Paris. It is one of the five academies of the . The current president of the academy (2021) is Alain-Charles Perrot, a French architect. Background The academy was created in 1816 in Paris as a me ...

in 1989 and served as its President in 1995. Nigg died November 12, 2008, aged 84.

Works

*Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, 1943 *Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra, 1943 *

Piano Sonata A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement (Liszt, Scriabin, Medtner, Berg), others with two movemen ...

No. 1, 1943 *''Timour'', symphonic poem, 1944 *Variations for Piano and 10 Instruments, 1946 *Four Mélodies on poems by

Paul Éluard Paul Éluard (), born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (; 14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952), was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement. In 1916, he chose the name Paul Éluard, a matronymic borrowed from his maternal ...

, 1950 *Billiard,

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

, 1950 *''Pour un poète captif'', symphonic poem, 1951 *Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1, 1954 *Concerto for

Violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

and Orchestra, 1960 *Concerto for

Flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

and String Orchestra, 1960 *''Jérôme Bosch'',

symphony A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning c ...

, 1960 *''Histoire d'œuf'', conte musical based on

Blaise Cendrars Frédéric-Louis Sauser (1 September 1887 – 21 January 1961), better known as Blaise Cendrars (), was a Swiss-born novelist and poet who became a naturalized French citizen in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the European ...

, 1961 *''Pour un Tombeau d'Anatole'', 1961 *''Visages d'Axël'', 1965–67 *''Fulgur'', 1970 *Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra, 1971 *''Fastes de l'imaginaire'', 1974 *''Mirrors for

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of the Roma ...

'', 1979 *''Million d'oiseaux d'or'', 1981 *

String Quartet The term string quartet refers to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two Violin, violini ...

*''Du clair au sombre'', song cycle for

soprano A soprano () is a type of classical singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hertz, Hz to A5 in Choir, choral ...

and chamber orchestra, based on poems by Paul Éluard *

Arioso In classical music, arioso (; also aria parlante ) is a category of Solo (music), solo vocal piece, usually occurring in an opera or oratorio, falling somewhere between recitative and aria in style. Literally, arioso means ''airy''. The term arose ...

for Cello und Piano, 1987 *Concerto No. 1 for

Viola The viola ( , () ) is a string instrument of the violin family, and is usually bowed when played. Violas are slightly larger than violins, and have a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of the ...

and Orchestra, 1987–1988 *''Poème'' for orchestra, 1990 * Sonata for Piano and Violin, 1996 *''Tumultes'' for piano, 1998 *''Deux images de nuits'' for piano, 1999 *Concerto No. 2 for Viola and Orchestra, 2000

References

External links

*
Serge Nigg's biography
on Cdmc website {{DEFAULTSORT:Nigg, Serge 1924 births 2008 deaths French male classical composers 20th-century French classical composers Members of the Académie des beaux-arts Officers of the Ordre national du Mérite 20th-century French male musicians