Pierre Henry
Pierre Henry was a French composer, born in Paris on 9 December 1927. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Olivier Messiaen, Nadia Boulanger and the percussionist Félix Passerone. From 1949 he worked with Pierre Schaeffer at the radio studio of the RTF, where the two made Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950) and the opera Orphée 53, staged at Donaueschingen. He left the RTF in 1958 and set up his own studio. His long partnership with the choreographer Maurice Béjart produced Messe pour le temps présent (1967), written with Michel Colombier, whose "Psyché Rock" became a hit.
Ceremony
LP Reissue of this controversial conept album from 1969. "There are some albums out there that completely defy genre categorization. But every once in a blue moon, an album comes along that manages to completely defy all rational explanation. This would be one of those albums. Spooky Tooth was one of the heavier hard rock acts of its day, driven by Gary Wright (later of 'Dream Weaver' fame) and Mike Harrison's dual, bluesy wails set against Luther Grosvenor's searing guitar leads. One day…
Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul / Concerto Des Ambiguites
Electronic / avant-garde music pioneer and founder of the French musique concrète movement, Pierre Schaeffer, a radio engineer, believed that any sound could be music, and was one of the first to experiment with tape looping, splicing and sampling. He was also one of the first to record music on magnetic tape. Drawing inspiration from the Italian Futurists, he emphasized the double meaning of the word "play", meaning to play an instrument, but also to have fun and enjoy oneself. Pierre Henry, a …
Le Microphone Bien Tempere'
Electronic music pioneer, Pierre Henry, was a classically trained French pianist and percussionist, but gained notoriety as one of the driving forces behind the French avante-garde movement "musique concrète", which attempted make music by using "real" sounds, like trains on tracks, dogs barking, footsteps, etc., in place of actual instruments and then electronically manipulate them in ways that had never been seen before, effectively redefining the very idea of music itself, and forcing …
Musique Sans Titre / Spatiodynamisme
Pierre Henry was a student and collaborator of Musique Concréte pioneer Pierre Schaeffer. The first side of the LP, composed in 1951 at the Studio d'Essai of the RTF, is notably one of his earliest attempts at the discipline. 'Spatiodynamisme' however, is based on 1954 recordings of a Nicolas Schöfer sculpture and was elaborated in his first private studio APSOM while he was still under the tutleage of Pierre Schaeffer's Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concréte. It was intended to as a sou…
Haut-Voltage / Coexistence
Accompanying the Doxy's coverage of early Henry recordings, 'Haut Voltage' is his 22 minute composition made in 1956, featuring his own vocals and designed to soundtrack a stage production by French choreographer Maurice Béjart. The second composition was written in 1959 after Henry had left Pierre Scaeffer's RTF and set to work in his own studio. During the period he realized that in order to evolve Musique Concréte it would have to begin to use electronics. 'Coexistence' is his first at…
Cortical Art III
Boston's best cdr-label is run by a fine gentleman named K., and it's dedicated to reissuing obscure 20th century avant garde electronic music in shrunk down replica sleeves, complete with inserts, etc. Follow up to the brainwave recordings made our fave man in the ivory tower, Pierre. It's also on Creel Pone. This one's a performance of the piece given for French brain doctors, who presumably used similar equipment to track the neurological problems of their patients. In addition, the brain whi…