Pierre Henry and the Development of Musique Concrète

Hunter Malberg

Professor Rubin

Introduction to Music

13 October 2013

Pierre Henry and the Development of Musique Concrète

Pierre Henry is a French composer born in Paris, France on December 9th, 1927. He is most known for the development of musique concrète. Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that is made in part from acousmatic sound which is a sound one hears without seeing an originating cause. Also besides using sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, it can include sounds recorded from nature. As a young boy he started experimenting with the sounds of various objects. After he fell in love with integrating noise into music he went onto study with Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen, and Félix Passerone who were all French composers. Pierre studied with them from 1938-1948 and then shortly after that he began working at Club d'Essai studio at the Office de Radiodiffusion Television Francaise (RTF). This is when he began to write a lot of his pieces like Symphonie pour un home seul in 1950. Two years later he composed his first musique concrete in a short film Astrologie ou le mirorir de la vie. He also has composed for numerous films and ballets. After he left RTF he founded his first private electronic studio in France with Jean Baronnet.

Henry was not the only founding founder of musique concrète, Pierre Schaeffer created this style of music in Paris during the 1940's. Schaeffer's research into noises commenced as an experiment with the sound-effects warehouse at the French radio facility. Musique concrète is

"more than the simple use of sampled sounds as musical material, musique concrète represents an inversion in relation to traditional musical