HENRY, PIERRE — Musique sans Titre / Spatiodynamisme

" "Musique Sans Titre", composed in 1951 at the "Studio d'essai" of the RTF, was one of Henry's earliest attempts at "musique concrète". "Spatiodynamisme", on the other hand, was based on the 1954 recordings of a Nicolas Schöffer sound-sculpture. Metallic parts, mirrors, lights and sounds emanating from a 50-meter building interacted with the environment and visitors. Henry recorded various grating and scraping sounds from the metallic sculpture and then manipulated them for this piece, which was influenced by Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo's "L'Arte Dei Rumori". 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]