Portrait of Brice Pauset as a Master of Long-Ago Times
A French composer born in 1965, connoisseur and interpreter of Baroque and Classical repertoires, and borrower of early meters and medieval combinatorial practices, Brice Pauset builds an oeuvre where the use of period instruments, especially the harpsichord, bears traces of 17th- and 18th century French music. This article ties Pauset’s use of these instruments, their construction, and their temperaments, as well as period vocal techniques, to the musical forms in which they unfold, especially chorales in the Bach tradition and prolation canons in the lineage of Pierre de la Rue. The article argues for a principle common to many of Pauset’s works, consisting of the accumulation of three distinct temporalities, as well as for a rhetorical demand under the sign of a dialectical process of history.