David Hudry began his training at the Conservatoire de Montpellier while studying musicology at Paul Valéry University. In 2002, he completed his agrégation¹ in music before joining the composition and new technologies class at the Conservatoire de Paris, where he was trained by Emmanuel Nunes, Stefano Gervasoni, and Luis Naón. He also took the Cursus program for composition and computer music at IRCAM with Yan Maresz in 2006. Hudry received his higher education degree in 2008 and was selected for the Royaumont Fondation composition session “Voix Nouvelles” the following year.

Particularly at the beginning of his career, Hudry took inspiration from the graphic arts, especially the works and reflections of painters such as Paul Klee and Zao Wou-Ki. Wassily Kandinsky is another reference point for his work, in particular the 1926 essay Point and Line to Plane. From Kandinsky’s reflections, Hudry developed his use of melodic line, counterpoint, and harmonic surfaces. Space became integral to his work, explored through dividing and spatializing the orchestra. Examples can be found in Räumezeit (2004) and Nachtspiegel (2008).

Hudry is interested in drama. He imagines his pieces as crossed by moving characters, in an informal narrative that shapes the piece’s progression. In Impromptu pour un monodrame (Impromptu for a monodrama) (2007), the bassoon soloist, who alternately embodies five different musical characters, faces a musical doppelgänger — a favorite notion for Hudry — created by electronics.

More recently, Hudry became interested in brownfield sites and abandoned cities. In Passage (2012), he works with the Émile Verhaeren poem Les usines (The Factories). Following several visits to Buffalo, New York, he became passionate about the history of the states in the Rust Belt. In The Forgotten City (2016), he sought to evoke the energy of these cities in their bygone days of industry. Pulse, rhythm, and timbre become key in these works. Machina humana followed in 2017 and then Rituals: Men and Machines in 2021; each used concrete sounds recorded in factories in the Arve Valley (Haute-Savoie, France) and Lower Silesia (Poland), respectively. These pieces provided Hudry the opportunity to reflect on the relationship between human and machine, a subject that has been present throughout his work since his training in electronics.

His works have been played by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Ensemble intercontemporain, the Ensemble Modern, the ensemble recherche, the Freiburger Barockorchester, the Lemanic Modern Ensemble, the Arditti Quartet, the Tana Quartet, the Ensemble Multilatérale, and Ars Nova, among others. The works have been performed at festivals such as Festival Musica, Musiques démesurées, Festival Archipel, June in Buffalo, BW Ensemble-Akademie Freiburg, Montreal/New Musics, Vale of Glamorgan Festival, and Sound Festival Aberdeen.

In 2016, Col Legno released a CD profiling Hudry’s work. He is published by Éditions Musicales Artchipel.

Prizes and Awards

• Ernst Von Siemens Composers’ Prize, 2016
• Fondation Francis et Mica Salabert Award, 2015
• Pierre Cardin Musical Composition Prize (Institut de France, Académie des Beaux-Arts), 2012
• Meyer Foundation Bursary, 2006

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^{1. In France, the agrégation is a competitive examination for civil service in the French public education system. ↩}