Succession

I reached the French composer Tristan Murail on a Tuesday afternoon at his home in Provence. Since moving back to Europe from New York, where he taught at Columbia University for 13 years, Murail has built himself a kind of comfortable semi-retirement, though he is still composing and teaching: family, year-round good weather, separate studio, pool. His English is fluent, but free of Americanisms. We spoke about the guesswork of microtonal music, the attraction of the ondes martenot, and the way total serialism continues to hurt the contemporary music scene.