Pierre Henry

The celebrated French composer Pierre Henry was among the pivotal forces behind the development of musique concrète, becoming the first formally educated musician to devote his energies to the electronic medium. Born in Paris on December 9, 1927, he began training at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten, studying piano under Nadia Boulanger and percussion under Felix Passerone while also attending the classes of Olivier Messiaen. Still, Henry had little regard for traditional musical instruments, preferring instead to privately experiment with non-musical sound sources; over time, he grew fascinated with the notion of incorporating noise into the compositional process, and perhaps unsurprisingly first attracted notice in performing circles for his prowess as a percussionist. In 1949, Henry joined the staff of the RTF electronic studio, founded by Pierre Schaeffer five years earlier; he soon immersed himself completely in electronic music, heading the Groupe de Research de Musique Concrète throughout the greater part of the 1950s. Henry soon began compiling a "sound herbal," a catalog of any sound potentially useful from a musical standpoint -- everything from animal cries to editing techniques to speed variations, all of which he deemed superior to conventional instrumentation. It inspired 1950's Symphonie pour un homme seul, a 12-movement work co-written by Henry and Schaeffer employing the sounds of the human body; solo pieces including 1951's Le microphone bien tempere (the first attempt at notated musique concrète), Musique sans titre and Concerto des ambiguites (which combined live piano with its own recorded distorted sounds) all broke new ground as well. In 1952, Henry produced the first musique concrète ever commissioned for commercial films when he scored...