Henry, Pierre (EN)

Henry Pierre, *9 December 1927 Paris, †5 July 2017 Paris, French composer. He studied at the Paris Conservatory (graduated in 1948) with N. Boulanger (piano), F. Passeronne (percussion), and O. Messiaen (harmony). Initially, he worked mainly as an orchestral percussionist, composing instrumental pieces showing various influences (Messiaen, Jolivet). At the same time, he was interested in experiments with sound material, the art of noise, and also in film technique and aesthetics. In 1948, he met P. Schaeffer, with whom he collaborated from 1949 at the Studio d’Essai de l’ORTF on recording and processing “concrete material.” In 1950, he created his first pieces based on this material, including Symphonie pour un homme seul, composed together with P. Schaeffer, the first major piece in the field of concrete music. In 1950–58, Henry directed the Groupe de Recherchesde Musique Concrète (GRMC), founded by P. Schaeffer at ORTF, later transformed into the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM). Henry collaborated with O. Messiaen on Timbres-durées. In 1958, Henry left GRM due to, among others, disagreements resulting from differences in attitudes; Henry was more inclined towards composition, Schaeffer towards scientific and teaching work. From then on, Henry composed in isolation. Commissions for applied music enabled him to establish in 1960 (with Jean Baronnet) the first private studio in France, called Applications de Procédés Sonores de Musique Electroacoustique (APSOME). Henry gained increasing recognition as a composer of both classical and applied music. His successes were also due to his collaboration with M. Béjart (1955–75). In 1968, he received his first commission from the Ministry of Culture for the piece Apocalypse de Jean. His Philips recordings brought him the Grand Prix National du Disque (1966), and for the recording Apocalypse de Jean, he received the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros (1970). From 1982, he was the director of the Son et Recherche Electroacoustique (SON/RE) association, which focuses mainly on the development of new electroacoustic equipment. In 1982, he received the Knight’s Cross of the Legion of Honour.

Henry is one of the pioneers of electroacoustic music (a French term encompassing concrete and electronic music). His work is, in a way, a testament to the history of this genre, both in terms of the development of technical and expressive means. Although Henry studied composition in a classical way, his musical language represents a new aesthetic, expressed in a specific combination of means characteristic of the avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s (serialism, aleatoricism, informelle) and earlier the art of noise, as well as studio technology. Henry experimented freely, selecting different categories of material and types of expression, formal and stylistic means. He passionately collects all phenomena and sounds – one could say: the acoustic matter of the world of nature and technology. Among the instruments, he most often reaches for the sounds of percussion, prepared piano and the human voice (also speech). He is fascinated by the almost unlimited possibility of creating any expressive and semantic arrangements from sounds, phenomena and words – mainly through editing and the technique of mixing. Among the characteristic techniques, there is so-called “sillon fermé,” a technique of a closed groove on a gramophone record (Symphonie pour un homme seul), later replaced by the so-called magnetic loop (complex textural-rhythmic situations, on the border of a sense of order – somewhat similar in terms of time organization to repetitive music – and aleatoricism, obtained by recording loops, are encountered in Mouvement-rythme-étude). One of the more frequently used techniques is electronic-acoustic coupling in the microphone-loudspeaker system, the so-called Larsen effect (this is how the material of the Second Symphony was created). The basic idea in Henry’s compositional technique is obtaining sounds (improvised sequences) by movement-gesture (including by manually turning the record, moving the microphone in front of the loudspeaker or “playing” on potentiometers). This gives the possibility of instrumental-performing, direct influence on the material obtained in this way, its colour and form. It is paradoxical that within a genre that seems to be extremely technical, “musique gestuelle” (gestural music) is created in this way. The desire for corporate control of music led Henry to the idea (perhaps the ultimate one on this path) of influencing sound courses with electroencephalogram waves (states of brain activity and rest). The composer, connected to a specially constructed device (corticalart), connected to a system of acoustic generators, created live improvisations during a concert (cerebral live electronic).

Henry can be described as an electroacoustic composer-instrumentalist not only because of the significant presence of “instrumental” features in the process of composition but also because of the specificity of concert projections of his works. Concert reproduction is the next stage of Henry’s compositional work. To put it simply, it proceeds as follows: a piece with a static spatial-dynamic shape is prepared in the studio; during the concert, Henry models this shape, creating a so-called “kinetic sculpture” of the piece. Since the mid-1960s, his works have been characterised by an expanded spatial texture (spatial polyphony), they are recorded in multi-tracks and emitted using a so-called loudspeaker orchestra (sets of loudspeakers with different acoustic parameters). Henry also composes in a reduced, stereophonic space. Music shaped in this way, even with symbolic meaning (the space of sound movement is understood as the space of a body in movement), appears in Mouvement-rythmeétude. Concert performances of Henry’s works have had a wide response. In time, they transformed into a type of concert-ritual, with a strong spectacular element. Their symbolism and monumentality are linked to the subject matter of the piece (Apocalypse de Jean, Messe de Liverpool, Ceremony).

Henry’s musical thinking is characterised by values ​​of opposite poles, visible at various levels of the work: in terms of principles – freedom (even aleatoric) and rigour (downright classical); in terms of expression – aggression and subtlety, richness and asceticism; in terms of meaning – “abstractness” and reference to movement, image, dramatic content; in terms of genre – autonomy and connection with ballet and multimedia; in terms of style – concentration on uniformity and conscious reaching for various stylistic patterns; at the same time, there is a tendency towards diversity, richness, ambiguity, towards “extroverted” music. In terms of form, the serial, multi-episode type (also composed of small pieces) dominates, with patterns taken from history, e.g. a four-part symphony, the arrangement of the form of a mass; these sections are combined arbitrarily, but contrasted (Le microphone bien tempéré), or arranged according to literary or dramatic content (La reine verte, Apocalypse de Jean). The identity and meaning of the form of the work are sometimes questioned. Henry combines works, fitting one into another (La noire à soixante + Granulométrie), takes a section (a piece of work) from a given work and merges it into another, changes the arrangement of sections depending on, for example, the concept of a record recording or a given concert programme. He composes concert works (Parcours-Cosmogonie).

If we were to look for a category underlying Henry’s aesthetics, we should pay attention to the content of his manifesto from 1950. The composer perceives the world as the element of fire, he writes that “early music must be destroyed,” it must be reincarnated, “transferred from the sphere of art to the realm of sacralised anxiety.” Henry’s later work seems to emphasise such a view of the world; this is evidenced by the choice of means and themes: screaming, crying, love, death, and catastrophism. However, Henry never accepted the destructive trends of the counterculture, perhaps because the category of form is constantly present at the foundation of his creative activities. In his manifesto, he writes: “the rigour of form should not be rejected entirely, but only that which makes music artificial.” Henry is a creator expressing the spirit of his era, a civilisation full of anxiety, from which he wants to break away through ritual or ritual music.

Literature: M. Chion, Pierre Henry, Paris 1980; F. Delalande, Music analysis and reception behaviours: Sommeil by Pierre Henry, “Journal of new music research” 1998 no. 1–2; O. Nimczik, Das Ensemble der Radios: Radiomusiken von John Cage, Vinko Globokar und Pierre Henry, “Musik & Bildung: Praxis Musikunterricht” 1999 no. 1; D. Robellaz, Une tour de Babel, création de Pierre Henry, “Revue musicale de Suisse romande” 1999 no. 3; E. Hondré, Jacques Villeglé et Pierre Henry: Dans la rue, “Cité musiques: Journal de la Cité de la Musique” 2000 no. 29; O. Julien, Entretien avec Pierre Henry, “Les cahiers de l’OMF” 2000 no. 5; R. Young, Interview: Pierre Henry, in: Modulations: A history of electronic music – Throbbing words on sound, ed. P. Shapiro, New York 2000; C. Palombini, Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995) and Pierre Henry (1927– ), in: Music of the twentieth-century avant-garde: A biocritical sourcebook, ed. L. Sitsky, Westport 2002; A. Rey, Pierre Henry in seinem schönen Heute: Ein Komponist, dessen Werk nichts weniger als das Leben ist, “Dissonanz” 2002 no. 75; M. Chion, Pierre Henry, Paris 2003; H. Girault, Les affichages de Pierre Henry: Apparitions concertées – Analyse d’un parcours, “Musurgia: Analyse et pratique musicales” 2010 no. 3; R. Boss, E.W. Partsch, Bruckner und Techno??? Einige Gedanken zur Verarbeitung von Brucknerschen Strukturen in Kompositionen von Pierre Henry und Wolfgang Voigt, “Studien & Berichte: Mitteilungsblatt der Internationalen Bruckner-Gesellschaft” 2011 no. 76; C. Delhaye, Orphée 53 de Pierre Schaeffer et Pierre Henry: Aux origines du scandale de Donaueschingen, “Revue de musicologie” 2012 no. 1; R. Frisius, Zwischen Text und Klang, Technik und Fauvismus: Pierre Henrys Apocalypse de Jean, “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik” 2012 no. 6; T. Gorbach, Das ‘Kinoauge’ trifft auf das „Ohrenkino”: Der epochale Stummfilm L’Homme a la Camera von Dziga Vertow (1929) mit der kongenialen Musik von Pierre Henry (1929), in: Wien Modern 30: Bilder im Kopf, part 2, ed. B. Günther, J.I. Kallenberg, Vienna 2017; T. Meyer, Pierre Henry 1927–2017, “Dissonance: Schweizer Musikzeitschrift für Forschung und Kreation” 2017 no. 139.