HENRY, PIERRE — Le Voile d'Orphee

"Pierre Henry's 1953 "Veil of Orpheus" is the first example of symphonic "musique concrète", (the use of non-traditional sources and "real" sounds--like trains, dogs barking, footsteps, etc.-- in place of actual instruments and then electronically manipulating these sounds in new ways.), originally composed for an opera ("Orpheus 53", written with movement founder Pierre Schaeffer for the Donaueschingen Festival). Despite the quantum leaps made in the field of electronics over the past 50 years, this initial experiment still manages to convey its original importance. The piece uses "concrete sounds" much in the same way a traditional orchestra would use individual instruments. Besides two versions of "Veil of Orpheus" (the original 27 min. version and the second 15 min. version used in the Maurice Bejart-Pierre Henry ballet "Orpheus"in 1958), there are two shorter pieces ("Entity" and "Spiral"), which evoke an unsettling search for meaning that is so often associated with Henry's work. Electronic music pioneer Pierre Henry (b. 1927) is a classically trained French pianist and percussionist, but gained notoriety as one of the driving forces behind the French avante-garde movement "musique concrète", started by Pierre Schaeffer, a radio engineer, in 1950. Henry believed that any sound could be music, and was one of the first to experiment with tape looping, splicing and sampling. Drawing inspiration from Italian Futurists, like Luigi Russolo, he believed that any sound could be music, and that the industrial sounds of our modern world were in some ways the "music" of our modern times. "Musique concrète" attempted to make music by using "real" sounds, like trains, dogs barking, footsteps, etc., in place of actual instruments and then electronically manipulating them in ways that had never been seen before, effectively redefining the very idea of music itself, and forcing listeners to ask themselves the question, "what is music?". Many did, and the many answers to this question went on to inspire scores of artists and musicians, and the ripple effect is still being felt today." [label info]