Composer's Series II: Bernard Parmegiani

*disclaimer: in my books, the total undisputed lord..my favourite composer ever. this post will hardly do justice to the complete and utter genious this man did with sound, so keep in mind this is far from exhaustive and pretty much a taster.

also due to a serious lack of information available on the web, some of this info

was culled from french sites, with some confusing translation.

http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco8/grm/portraitR.jpg'>

Bernard Parmegiani b. 1927 Paris, France

Raised between two pianos, it ' grandit' by listening to the ranges day labourers as well as the repertory virtuoso of his father-in-law. Sound, it learns the various techniques (cinema, radio, television, center of radiophonic studies) and refines the ear while becoming sound engineer. In addition, its practice of the MIME during four years at the school of J Lecoq and Mr. Decroux sensitize it with the practice of the gesture, with the plasticity of space.

It is in 1959 that it enters to the Group of Musical Research where, under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer, it follows during two years the training course of music electroacoustic.

In 1962, it approaches its first part, Violostries, which will be the subject of a choreography among most significant of the Contemporary Theatre of Amiens directed by Jacques-Albert Cartier.

Pierre Schaeffer entrusts the responsibility for the sector Music-Image to him. He enters then in relation to scenario writers and composes the music of many courts and full-length films carried out by R. Lapoujade, P. Foldès, P. Kamler, V Borowczyck, P. Kast, J Baratier, P. Kassovitz... It is for him the occasion to start a personalized musical research where any freedom is left to him within the framework of a time fixed, measured and imposed by the duration of the image and contents of which he is not the author. Excel training to tackle the problems of the form related to that of time. This last concept besides will be often put forward in considerable works and more particularly in the mobile Moment, Capture transitory, This compound...

It extends its research to the video art during a study trip in the United States devoted to the video Art, carried out thanks to a purse of the Ministry for the Culture. On its return, it carries out three vidéos musical: The Eye listens (1973), Jeux of artifices (1979) to the Research centre of the ORTF and the transparent Screen (1973) in Cologne with the WDR where it is invited.

Interested by the meeting between the techniques of improvisation of the jazz and that of the music electroacoustic, it works with various free jazz groups: J-L Chautemps, B Vitet, Mr. Portal, like with The Third Ear Band, group of pop music in London.

In addition to the realization of credits (France-Culture, France-Music, Antenne 2, Aéroport of Roissy...) and dramatic musics intended for the radio, with television, the cinema or choreography, it composes about fifty musical parts whose majority are acousmatic, some mixed (instrument and band), others being musical actions where interpreters intervene, actors, instrumentalists.

Programmed in the international festivals and concerts on the other side of the Atlantic, some of its works are crowned: Price of the Academy of the French Disc (1979); Price of the SACEM (1981); Victories of the Music (1990); Price "Magister" with the International Contest of Bourges (1991).

Principal works: Violostries (1964), the mobile Moment, Captures transitory (1967-68), the Eye listens (1970), the Hell (according to the Divine Comedy) (1971), to finish some with the capacity of Orphée (1972), De Natura sonorum (1975), the Echo of the mirror (1980), the Creation of the world (1984), Exercisme 1, 2 and 3 (1985-86), This compound (1991), Meanwhile (1992), Sonare (1997).

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some reviews:

De Natura Sonorum

http://mdos.at/recordimage.php?id=4638'>

1.)Classic 1975 recording of mostly quiet, resonating electronic sounds. "With the music of Bernard Parmegiani something in us is freed and comes out of passivity. This thing, which I know now was blocked without my knowing where, is the buzzing and Time within the flesh ? a humming of millions of closed mouths between the cells. What is the murmur made up of? The body develops a tongue in listening to this music, and there is within it great movement of the sound material... it is music that makes the organic breathe, lifts it up and stretches it... music that takes the ear 'beyond' work, but touching the inner side." ? Bernard Noel.

2.)Often cited as a huge influence upon those figureheads of current abstract electronica, Bernard Parmegiani emphasized the "instantaneousness of the ephemeral and the mobility of the repetitive" within his fusionist compositions between musique concrete and live instrumentation. While Autechre took this agenda (and particularly Parmegiani's ping-pong algorithms of granular synthesis) to a post-electro / fractured breakbeat context, Parmegiani is firmly rooted in the traditions of INA GRM electronic music. Over the two distinct suites of "Da Natura Sonorum," Parmegiani couples electronic and tape constuctions with lengthy sustained chords from live instruments at times attaining a Feldman-esque flutter of multiple French Horns, yet the second passage exhibits more fleeting compositions for the orchestral elements in favor of dense collages of electronics.

audio:

Points Contre Champs

Conjugaison du Timbre

Pleins et Delies

Le Memoire Des Sons

http://mdos.at/recordimage.php?id=4558'>

1.)AKA The Memory of Sounds. Features 3 works: "Capture Éphémère" (1967); "Sons-jeu" (1987); "La Mémoire des Sons" (2001). "Excepting some rare mixed pieces, Paremegiani's works as a whole take the form of music for 'fixedsounds', coming within the scope of the immense repertoire of electro-acoustic music. From his training in the art of mime and his experience as a sound engineer, Parmegiani has retained a taste for a hand-to-hand approach (sound/embodiment, as we could be tempted to say) with various sound mate-rials which he has developed throughout markedly diverse works." RE: "Capture Éphémère": "The beating of terror-stricken wings, gliding ascents, rockets, dull explosions: the fission of the fine powder of the sound is then recovered, in layers of 'captured', beating time: impossible stases of reso-nance ('fleeting' by their very nature ...) which however persist, beating out their miraculous cohesion: a magical effect even today: proof that it is not due to technique. Or: a sequence of utter loss, waste: an accumulation as Schaeffer would have said ('reiteration abounding in brief elements'; 'like a shower of stones dispersing'...), having the fluidity of a waterfall, with one hundred thousand elements interwoven in discontinuity, 'eccentric', generous, suffocating... Or: this furious vibration, which in its steep ascent, is imbued with a triumphant appearance of tireless virtuosity... _And so many intimately interwoven composite sequences, as they advance, hurtling through space (and the Russian mountains ...) with seemingly inexhaustible energy; and marked several times, just before a silence, by the same small elegant asterisk. However, all of this (deafening volubility) is finally calmed by a short coda: where a movement to reduce and rarefy particles splits this mass in extremis into an ethereal shower of sparks, having the effect of a prolonged pause." -- Jean-Christophe Thomas.

2.)"Le Memoire Des Sons" collects three pieces from the French musique concrete composer Bernard Parmegiani, including "Capture Ephemere" (1967), "Sons-Jeu" (1987), and "La Memoire des Sons" (2001). As with his previous works including his masterpiece "La Creation Du Monde," Parmegiani follows an acousmatic approach to contextualizing how his heavily processed sounds are to be perceived. Despite the span of 34 years in between all of these recordings, there is a remarkable similarity in how Parmegian fractures the source material into generative particles tumbling, exploding, flanging, dissolving, sparkling, and timestretching into very plastic sound constructions, that clearly follow the strict rules of what musique concrete should be according to the precepts of the French state sponsored institution INA-GRM.

audio:

Sons Jeu

CaptureEphemere

alot of the 'its', I feel, could be replaced with 'his' or 'he'.

Translational analysis brought to you by Papa Boner.

Otherwise, A plus plus. New sounds are the biznipple.

strange he has such an italian last name.

BROWNer

That JohnCageMakeoutMusic thing was to catch that <1% of people out there in a big "hum?". I never made out to John Cage but I think i'm going to try it with an unsuspecting person. I will be like - mind if I put a little something on to get us in the mood?(seductive voice)..Then..

Oh by the way it is really good to see a post like this in here.

I don't know this composer but I will now certainly check him out.

I like Harry Parch..not so much for the overall musicallity..but for the fun of the works.

Re: BROWNer

Originally posted by SPACEiNVADER

That JohnCageMakeoutMusic thing was to catch that <1% of people out there in a big "hum?". I never made out to John Cage but I think i'm going to try it with an unsuspecting person. I will be like - mind if I put a little something on to get us in the mood?(seductive voice)..Then..

 

Oh by the way it is really good to see a post like this in here.

 

I don't know this composer but I will now certainly check him out.

 

 

I like Harry Parch..not so much for the overall musicallity..but for the fun of the works.

haha, i was wondering..i thought it may have been a typo..

its funny you mention partch..a couple months ago, closely following the first of this

series i was going to do a partch spotlight..but there wasn't too many sound files out there to spice it up...i'll probably still do one though..he was fucking amazing.....

^.

good thread

someone needs to do a thread on Maurice Durufle, though. Straight up the illest.

http://raceworx.com/funnypics/sitinthecornerdumbass.jpg'>

eh..

that somebody is you.

i know everyone is dying to hear these new samples i found..

so..without further ado..

from Le Creation Du Monde:

Instant 0

Polyphonie

and don't forget clean undies!

yes do a parch thread!

he has such an interesting story..

hobo/lauriate/composer/nut/instument maker

you can take a trip to NJ to see/play/learn about the instuments he made etc.

Dean Drummond(spelling? its been a while) is the curator of his estate and you can contact him if you can find the info..

My undergrad music teacher composer Amy Rubin set me up with the contact a while ago.

Never went myself though.

oh heres the info

http://www.newband.org/instruments.htm

for dean's thing.

and check these sites for some very very interesting stuff

Pythagorean music theory

Lamdoma Matrix

www.lambdoma.com/

and check out this awesome maniac Barbara Hero:

http://members.aol.com/bhero/CatalogPages.html

??

!!

i peeped out those sites, can't say they did much for me.

i'm really not into theory at all, or math. theory is way too dry

for me...maybe if i was taking a course.....the only person

i'd read as far as theory shit is cage..and even his shit is

pretty damn boring.

the harmonics stuff seemed kind of interesting, but i'd rather

just listen to the stuff and see if it's any good than read about chaka beads and shit.

i don't' know, rarely is the process that interesting to me..the end result

is what counts.

you ever talk about maryanne amacher in that class of yours?

I see your perspective.

I love the math though.

And I have to say the creative process is very rewarding for me both in sonic and visual art.

oh and no we did not talk about maryanne.