Dusapin has composed solo, chamber, orchestral, vocal, and choral works, as well as several operas, and has been honored with numerous prizes and awards.
[9] Dusapin's work from the 1990s further illustrates the influence of folk music through its frequent use of drones and use of restricted modes, though most often without obvious tonal centers.
"[14] Stoïnova, however, wrote this article four years before Dusapin completed the Trio Rombach (1997), for piano, violin or clarinet, and cello.
As Stoïnova explains, "The micro-intervals and the micro-glissandi ... in such instrumental works as Inside (1980) for viola, Incisa (1982) for cello, and many other pieces are, in effect, completely integrated as different by entirely 'natural' components in extremely supple melodic progressions".
Stoïnova writes, "With regard to Dusapin's music we can observe a principle of auto-organization and complexity in the compositional system through the integration or assimilation of aleatory disturbances.
In fact, the intensity is such that Dusapin consciously makes pieces like Musique captive (1980) have short durations (in this case, three minutes), for by their ends the musicians and listeners alike are completely exhausted.
[22] Paul Griffiths notes that Dusapin's works from the 1990s are more harmonically conceived than his previous music, and that they incorporate more folk traditions, including the use of drones and modes.
[24] Ian Pace proposes that the influence of the group's clarinetist Armand Angster might be a reason for the prominence of the clarinet in much of Dusapin's music from this time period.
[24] Griffiths, too, makes note of the important role of the clarinet in the series of shorter pieces that Dusapin wrote after the completion of his first opera, Roméo et Juliette (1985–89).
[10] Dusapin's tendency to write for specific instrumentalists (in this case, clarinetist Angster) reveal a practical and realistic side of the composer.
[21] Stoïnova further describes the piece as internally destroying itself, writing, "The musical ideas of this piece—tremolo textures, a rising chromatic figure, violent crescendi, an expanding mass of detail etc.—destroy each other or to be more exact annihilate each other.
"[18] Written for string trio, the piece avoids the traditional process of statement and variation, thus breaking away from any sense of unity and continuity.
[27] La Rivière (1979) and L'Aven (1980–81) are two orchestral pieces based on ideas of nature that, according to Julian Anderson, show off the "more exuberant, violent side of Dusapin's style.
[29] Dusapin himself classifies the work as a "staged oratorio", rather than an opera or piece of musical theatre, and in it he once again avoids repetition and continuity and seeks to freely make textural connections.
[29] In his article on Dusapin, Anderson also highlights the variety of vocal techniques and textures used in the oratorio, including microtonal chords for the chorus and the monodic soprano line at the end of the work.
[22] Through its non-linear text and multiple textural layers, 'Niobé ou le Rocher de Sypile' maintains the same sense of discontinuity as Dusapin's earlier chamber works.
"[31] The opera also involves a chorus that comments on the action and a vocal quartet that serves as an intermediary and teaches Roméo and Juliette revolutionary concepts.
I dreamt of an extended, complex form comprising seven autonomous episodes regenerating themselves from within, fertilising other possibilities, and proliferating on the interstices left open ..."[32] The cycle treats the orchestra as a large solo instrument[32][34] and is the closest Dusapin has come to traditional symphonic thinking.
[32] In May 2016, Alisa Weilerstein and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premièred Outscape, Dusapin's second cello concerto, to positive critical reception.
Dusapin has won the following prizes and awards: In 2019, writers of The Guardian ranked Passion (2008) the 14th greatest work of art music since 2000, with Tim Ashley writing, "The score subtly alludes to Monteverdi and French baroque, but the sound world it creates is uniquely Dusapin's own: tense, quietly mesmerising and austerely beautiful.