Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Daniel Teruggi: GRM at 50

On Friday, November 14, Electronic Music Foundation will honor the 50th anniversary of the Paris-based Groupe de Recherches Musicales (Music Research Group), one of the world's major pioneering organizations in electronic music, with guests like Daniel Teruggi, director of GRM, François Bayle, past director, and Marc Battier, professor at the Sorbonne.

Teruggi @ Tempo Reale, 17th May 2008


The story of GRM begins 60 years ago, in April 1948, when Pierre Schaeffer, an engineer for the French Broadcasting Company, took a sound truck to a railroad switching yard at Batignolles, in Paris, to record the sounds of steam locomotives, wheels, and whistles. He used the sounds to compose Etude aux Chemins de Fer (Railroad Study) and coined the term 'musique concrète' to mean music composed with sounds (as against symbols for sounds). Following an enormously successful broadcast of a Concert de Bruits (Concert of Noises) in October 1948, he initiated a succession of research projects that culminated in 1958 in the official formation of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales with François Bayle, Luc Ferrari, Iannis Xenakis, and several other composers. The goal was to explore the new creative possibilities in using all sounds in music. The result was the beginning of a musical revolution.

[via Suzanne Thorpe - Arts Electric]

[Listen to Daniel Teruggi speak at Arts Electric]
[more on the concert]

No comments:

Post a Comment