december 1927- september 1949
Pierre Henry at the Conservatoire national de Paris (Paris Conservatory), 1937 © Private collection Pierre Henry
In Journal de mes sons (Journal of my Sounds), Pierre Henry reveals that even as a child he had installed at home: ‘a whole construction of instrument-like objects. Odd constructions, like a sculpture: cymbals on xylophone plates connecting to drums making the timbales echo. All these contraptions allowed me to invent new sounds, to find rather incredible effects’. (*)
From his childhood home in Quincy-sous-Sénart, situated in a large park with a garden, pond, forest, spring and an aviary, the property bordered by a railway line; to his mother's house in La Mure in the Isère region, via the Parisian home at 14 rue de Pétrograd; the young musician observed and experienced his first sensations of sound through contact with nature as well as the world of the opera and the concert hall where his father, himself an avid music lover, took him.
While studying music at the Conservatoire on rue de Madrid in Paris, he practised wild experiments; free and without constraint, thanks to his ‘instrument-objects’, sources of futuristic inventions.
His passion for cinema and his discovery of Pierre Schaeffer’s Cinq études de bruits (Five Studies of Noise), broadcast on the radio in 1948, converged when the director Jean-Claude Sée asked him to compose for his documentary Voir l'invisible (See the Invisible).
His improvisations, recorded on an acetate disc, were his ticket to the Studio d'essai founded by Schaeffer at the RTF six years earlier.
As early as 1947, Pierre Henry set out his convictions on the future of music in a founding text entitled Pour penser à une nouvelle musique.
(*) Pierre Henry - 'Journal de mes sons' - Paris, Séguier, 1996; reprint followed by 'Préfaces et manifestes' - Arles, Actes sud, 2004, p. 12-13
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Pierre Henry in Olivier Messiaen’s class at the Conservatoire national de Paris (Paris Conservatory), 1944 © Private collection Pierre Henry |
Pierre Henry in Olivier Messiaen’s class at the Conservatoire national de Paris (Paris Conservatory), 1944 © Private collection Pierre Henry |
Youth - Studio d’essai - Studio zéro - Apsome 1 - Apsome 2 - Apsome 3 - Son/Ré - Maison de sons