Jean Catoire
Jean Catoire was a French composer and music theorist. He was born on April 1, 1923, in Paris to a family of Russian émigré origin. His mother was of German descent, and he was the great-nephew of the Russian composer Georgy Catoire.
Catoire graduated from the Sergei Rachmaninoff Conservatory in Paris. From the late 1940s he attended Olivier Messiaen's class and heard his lectures in the United States. Rejecting both his mentor's musical principles and the then-dominant French traditions associated with Debussy and Schoenberg, he remained apart from public musical life.
He taught extensively; his pupils included Dominique Duprat. His music was rarely performed during much of his lifetime, and his first recording, coupled with works by Hildegard of Bingen, appeared in 1999.
A remarkably prolific composer, Catoire left about 600 works, including several dozen sacred compositions for organ and choir. He underwent two periods of creative silence, in 1959–1960 and 1989–1990. Among the French composers closest to him, he named Erik Satie; among Russian composers, he cited Mussorgsky, Scriabin, and Prokofiev.
In numerous essays, Catoire developed an individual philosophy of “new sound,” or “auditory visions,” drawing on early medieval European music, including the Notre Dame School and Pérotin, as well as Tibetan music-making. Musical stasis and ritual repetition were especially important to this approach. Researchers have associated his work with the sacred minimalism of Henryk Górecki and Arvo Pärt.
In his later years, advocates of New Consonant Music actively promoted Catoire's output, and both his sacred and secular works came to be performed more often. A 2004 recording presented his requiems alongside comparable works by Fauré and Satie. Catoire died in Paris on November 9, 2005.