299
See also: Ionisation 268–269 ■ Quartet for the End of Time 282–283 ■
4 ́33 ̋ 302–305 ■ Gruppen 306–307 ■ Pithoprakta 308 ■ Sinfonia 316–317I
n the aftermath of World
War II, composers were among
the many creative figures who
sensed a need for a new aesthetic.
They sought to create works that
would not be tainted—as they felt
complex state-sponsored orchestral
music and opera were—by any
connections with previous regimes,
particularly the Third Reich, its
allies, and the countries it had
occupied. Some turned to forms
of serialism (in which notes are
repeated in a specific order)
developed from the organic
structures of Anton Webern, an
earlier exponent of serial music
and one of the composers whose
work had been denounced as
“degenerate” by the Nazi Party.
Others found a new beginning
by recording ordinary, everyday
sounds and putting them together
into collagelike compositions
that merely needed to be played
on a disk or a tape, rather than
interpreted by live musicians in
a concert hall. This was the origin
of musique concrète, an early
form of electronic music.
It was at the Studio d’Essai de
la Radiodiffusion Nationale that
Pierre Schaeffer began work on theSymphonie de bruits (“Symphony
of sounds”). Founded in 1942 by
theatre director Jacques Copeau
and his pupils as the center of the
Resistance movement in French
radio, the studio subsequently
became the cradle of musique
concrète. In collaboration with
Pierre Henry, who joined the
electronic studio in 1949, Schaeffer
developed his original Symphonie
into the Symphonie pour un homme
seul (“Symphony for a lone man”),
premiered at the École Normale
de Musique in Paris, in 1950. Henry
went on to run what was eventually
called the Groupe de Recherche de
Musique Concrète—the body that
studied and developed musique
concrète from 1951 to 1958.The sounds of a life
In its original form, the Symphonie
consisted of 22 movements using
turntables and mixers. For a
broadcast in 1951, this number
was reduced to 11, but then ❯❯CONTEMPORARY
Pierre Schaeffer
and Pierre HenryBorn in 1910 in Nancy,
Schaeffer grew up in a family
of musicians. He, however,
studied engineering and
received a diploma in radio
broadcasting from the École
Polytechnique before joining
the French radio and TV
broadcasting company
Radiodiffusion-Télévision
française, in 1936. In 1949,
Schaeffer met Pierre Henry,
a composer and percussionist,
born in Paris in 1927, who
had studied at the Paris
Conservatoire with the
composers Nadia Boulanger
and Olivier Messiaen.
Together they formed the
Groupe de Recherche de
Musique Concrète, remaining
close collaborators until 1958
when the more prolific Henry
left to found his own
independent studio called
Applications de Procédés
Sonores en Musique
Electroacoustique.
Henry continued to write
electronic scores for films
and ballet, as well as his
incomplete La Messe de
Liverpool, an electronic mass
commissioned for the opening
of Liverpool Cathedral in
the UK in 1968. Schaeffer
composed little more, although
he continued writing and
teaching; his pupils included
Jean-Michel Jarre, a pioneer
of electronic music. Schaeffer
died in Aix-en-Provence in
1995 aged 85. Henry died in
Paris in 2017, at the age of 89.Other key collaborations1950 La course au kilocycle
(radio score)
1953 Orphée 53
1957 Sahara d’aujourd’huiPierre Henry, in concert in Paris in
1952, used four large circular receiver
coils to show how sound transmitted
through four loudspeakers could be
shifted around a listening space.Something new has been
added, a new art of sound. Am
I wrong in calling it music?
Pierre SchaefferUS_298-301_Henry_and_Schaeffer.indd 299 26/03/18 1:01 PM