Novelist, critic and radio producer Benoît Duteurtre dies at 64

Benoît Duteurtre died on Tuesday following a heart attack. He had been producing the show “Étonnez-moi Benoît” on France Musique since 1999.

The novelist, music critic and historic producer of France Musique, Benoît Duteurtre, died on Tuesday July 16 following a heart attack, France Musique learned from his family. He was 64 years old.

Great-grandson of President René Coty, Benoît Duteurtre was encouraged to become a novelist in the early 1980s by the Irish writer and Nobel Prize winner for literature Samuel Beckett. He published his first book, Lost sleepin 1985, and won the Prix Médicis in 2001 for The trip to France.

Benoît Duteurtre had a parallel career as a music critic and radio producer. He studied musicology in the late 1970s, frequented contemporary music and jazz circles, and participated as a pianist in several shows. He regularly wrote in the columns of Marianne and Literary Figaro.

He arrived at France Musique in 1996 to host the show “Les Beaux Dimanches”, then in 1999, he became producer and host of the show “Étonnez-moi Benoît”, dedicated to operetta, music hall and traditional song, which was to celebrate its 25th anniversary this year.

In a message posted this Wednesday evening on X, the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati shared her “emotion”evoking a “magnificent writer” and one “musicologist with joyful erudition“. “Each of his columns, his broadcasts, his books, vibrated with a luminous personality, an unparalleled humor, which did so much for music and the arts”she wrote.