Charles van Hemelryck is a French composer whose music seeks a balance between formal rigor and spontaneous impulse, between contemplation and exaltation.
An heir to post-minimalism, he develops a language rooted in pulse, clarity of texture, and a taste for spareness. His writing is nourished as much by a search for purity as by the pleasure of rhythm: trance and jubilation coexist with serenity and silence.
A poet as much as a musician, he maintains with words a relationship of mutual inspiration. For him, words and sounds do not comment on one another: they echo, breathe, and illuminate each other. Poetry, philosophy, and nature form the three poles of a single constellation from which his imagination draws.
Trained in Paris and Lyon, he studied composition, writing, and music pedagogy at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon, where he earned two Master’s degrees as well as the Certificat d’Aptitude. An Erasmus scholarship led him to the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where exposure to the Nordic contemporary scene broadened his artistic horizons. At the same time, philosophical studies at the Sorbonne deepened his reflection on reason, emotion, intelligibility, and the relation between body and mind.
His catalogue ranges from orchestral music to vocal and choral works, as well as chamber music and solo pieces. Recent orchestral creations include The Conquest of Happiness (2025), Vers le Soleil (for horn and symphony orchestra, 2025), Éloge de la Raison (2022), and What Good Shall I Do This Day? (2021). Conceived as inner journeys, his works often explore the transformation from one state to another: from shadow to light, tension to peace, chaos to order.
A philosophical and existential influence runs through his music: the transcendence of the tragic, the release of breath, the pursuit of unity between reason and emotion. The spirit of the Enlightenment meets that of meditation with an Eastern inflection. Beneath the controlled structure, emotion rises—sometimes in a simple rhythmic sway, sometimes in an orchestral outburst bordering on dance. He readily embraces his affinity for popular music and its vital energies, integrating them into a refined and economical musical language.
His music has been performed in France, Finland, Poland, the Netherlands, Canada, and Iceland, and supported by numerous institutions: Fondation Société Générale, Beaumarchais-SACD, VocalEspoo Festival (Finland), the Red Note Festival (United States), Hendrix College Choir Competition (USA), and more recently the Tampa Bay Symphony Competition (2025).
Committed to a dialogue between creation and transmission, he was a founding member of the association Ekheïa – Création musicale, dedicated to contemporary music outreach, and has undertaken collaborations with art galleries in Lyon and the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Hospital in Lyon. He currently teaches composition and orchestration at the Conservatoire du Pays de Montbéliard and at the University of Bourgogne-Europe.
An avid sailor, he finds in navigation an intimate metaphor for creation: forces in motion, breath, inner orientation. This relationship with wind, time, silence, and the tumult of the sea permeates his musical imagination, particularly palpable in his horn sonata Au large, l’étendue and his choral work Présence.
His artistic journey is guided by a search for clarity and resonance: making thought perceptible, turning joy into an act of resistance, and seeking, in variation and in time, the trace of a vital impulse. His work weaves a link between intellect and emotion, between peace and enthusiasm, between simplicity and light.
© Charles van Hemelryck 2025