LP version. Never before released. On the occasion of the centenary of composer Pierre Henry, Transversales Disques is very glad to announce the release of these lost tapes "Variance" & "Duo" by the electroacoustic music pioneer.

"Pierre Henry was born in 1927 in Paris. He began studying music as early as the age of 7. In 1944, guided by Olivier Messiaen, he envisioned and began composing the music of the future. His meeting with Pierre Schaeffer was pivotal to his creative path, leading the two of them to found the G.R.M. (Groupe de Recherches Musicales).

"Inventing new compositional techniques that would, in time, become widely used on a large scale, he continually gave this music a far-reaching power no one had anticipated at the outset. He also forged a sound entirely his own - as instantly recognizable as that of the most famous jazz musicians."

Variance (2005), premiered on 9 March 2006 at Studio 104 of the Maison de la Radio in Paris, is in Henry's words a variable and aleatory fugal system, composed in homage to Luc Ferrari, the musician of Tête et queue du dragon, whom he remembers as nonchalant, laughing and a great fugue-maker who crossed half a century of sound experiments with the refinement of a poet. As an epigraph Henry chose an unpublished 1951 poem by Ferrari, Pour les roues brisées.

Duo (2003) was premiered on 30 March 2003, again at Studio 104, during the Week-end Pierre Henry organised by INA-GRM for his 75th birthday. Henry called it a gestural rhapsody dedicated to Maurice Béjart, a dialogue without choreography built from a Larsen feedback tone and a piano performance that mirrors it, in six movements: Allant, Balancement, Tournoiement, Affirmation, Chanson and Péroraison. Both works were composed at Henry's Son/Ré studio with his musical assistant Bernadette Mangin, and are released under exclusive licence from Studio Son/Ré.

LP with OBI strip. Cover photo: Apsome, 1968, by Jacques Aubert.