A storm is brewing in the 4th arrondissement in Paris (and in wider cultural circles) by the decision by the arrondissement's Mayor, Christophe Girard, to decline permission for a commemorative plaque to be affixed to the building where the composer Henri Dutilleux lived. The reason given by the Mayor and the Paris Consellor Karen Taieb is that in 1941 Dutilleux composed the soundtrack for a propaganda film extolling the virtues of the sporting activities and the 'worker-model' in Vichy.

Dutilleux, who died in 2013 at the age of 98, was widely considered one of the greatest French composers. The music for the film (whose content is innocuous at best) was most likely a bread-and-butter job at a time when work was scarce - and besides, Dutilleux's war record included joining, in 1942, the National Front of Musicians who supported musicians, many of whom were Jewish, who were persecuted by the Nazis. During this time he also composed – illegally – a setting of a sonnet, La Geôle, by Jean Cassou that became a work of resistance. He also served as a medical orderly in the French army.

After the war, he served the French broadcasting company, Radio France, from 1944 and 1963 as Head of Music Production (during this period he came under colossal pressure from Pierre Boulez who disapproved of Dutilleux's music and who wielded considerable power). During his years at Radio France, Dutilleux composed a series of works which were taken up internationally and many have become modern repertoire works, championed by the likes of Charles Munch, George Szell, Mstislav Rostropovich, Seiji Ozawa, Anne Sophie Mutter, Sir Simon Rattle and Renée Fleming. Dutilleux was only one of four musicians (the others were Fauré, Saint-Saëns and Messiaen) to receive the Grand-Croix of the Légion d'honneur. In an act of extraordinary oversight, no government or State representative attended Dutilleux's funeral in May 2013.

The scandal has drawn in major cultural figures in French life including our colleagues at the magazine, Diapason, the pianist Philippe Cassard, the soprano Françoise Pollet and the composers Edith Canat de Chizy and Etienne Kippelen, a winner of the Concours Dutilleux in 2012 who has organised an online petition at the Mayor's act of cultural philistinism.

The centenary of the birth of Henri Dutilleux's falls next January 22: what more fitting tribute to one of France's most individual and distinctive musical voices than to honour him with a plaque?

[Photo: Hammje]