The engineer who sets scientific texts to music

Aurélien Hallopeau, an aerospace engineer who graduated from a dual degree program between EPFL’s microengineering department and CentraleSupélec in 2019, won the award in January for his composition titled Analemme – named after the curve that shows the sun’s position at a fixed time and place throughout the year. Inspired by the analemma’s shape, the composition’s structure reflects the sun’s path over the course of the year. Its lyrics are taken from seminal 18th- and 19th-century astronomical texts, blending science and poetry.

“Setting scientific texts to music is especially interesting because they’re often more poetic than we might think,” says Hallopeau. Indeed, his piece opens with a quote from Laplace’s The System of the World: “The sun moves in an orbit called the ecliptic.”

“This kind of transposition makes scientific concepts more accessible, so choir members and audience can approach them from a fresh perspective,” he adds. His composition also introduces percussive elements with a vibraphone and tubular bells, which represent the equinoxes – i.e., the moments when the sun crosses the Earth’s equator.

FestyVocal is a biennial festival of contemporary vocal music that takes place on the Le Corbusierarchitectural site in Firminy, in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The theme of this year’s edition was “The Equinox.” The selection panel awarded Hallopeau the Prix de la Ville de Firminy, one of the three available prizes. His composition will also be performed by a choir formed specifically for the festival, in a concert set to debut in November 2023 at Saint Peter’s Church in Firminy. The church’s architecture imposes a unique constraint on the choir – a highly unusual 13-second reverberation, which Hallopeau had to take into account when composing his piece.

Video: The winning composition at Eufonia (Bordeaux)

A musician since childhood, he began composing his own pieces when he was 14, originally for his grandmother and himself. His move to Switzerland marked a new chapter in his musical journey. “I joined the Lausanne University Choir and rediscovered choral music. I had great experiences there and it made me want to compose choral pieces,” he explains. After starting a Master’s degree at EPFL, he began composing for Ensemble Vocal Evohé, a UNIL and EPFL chamber choir. At the October 2021 edition of the Eufonia festival in Bordeaux, his Petit Bestiaire composition was sung in Cathédrale Saint-André and won four prizes, including first prize and the audience prize.

Passionate about space, Hallopeau artfully juggles composing with his engineering career at Astrocast, an EPFL spin-off, where he’s helping design a satellite constellation. “I wouldn't have chosen analemma as the theme for my composition if I wasn’t fascinated by science and space,” he says. Hallopeau is currently working on new compositions for choir in particular, though he’s not content to just retread old ground. “I’m also composing a piece for oboe, violin, viola and cello,” he says.