Pierre Henry

Composer, arranger, theorist and music historian Pierre Henry (1927-2017), a pupil of Olivier Messaien, was, alongside Pierre Schaeffer, one of the inventors of electroacoustic music. Although he did not philosophize on the very concept of musique concrète, as his partner and mentor in the GRMC (Groupe de Recherche sur la Musique Concrète) was able to do by leading think tanks, the author of Variation pour une porte et un soupir, Fragments pour Artaud and Le Livre des morts égyptien was one of the most prolific researchers in this field, going beyond the strictly technical framework of his mentor's thinking to conceive of music in its globality of sound and image in the company of Maurice Béjart(Messe pour le temps présent, 1966). Defining himself as "a classical musician who uses the instruments of his time", Pierre Henry has continued to work tirelessly on pianos, harps and sounds, classifying them and bequeathing them to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Known to a wide audience for his association with Michel Colombier on the "electronic jerks" of "Psyché rock", Pierre Henry died at the age of 89 on July 5, 2017.