The Music of Luc Ferrari

Slought Foundation and Soundfield NFP are pleased to announce an evening of new and experimental music featuring French violist Vincent Royer and Philadelphia-based Ensemble Noamnesia performing music by Luc Ferrari on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 from 8:00-9:30pm.

This concert is part of the 2007-2008 Soundfield @ Slought series.


Luc Ferrari (1929–2005) was a French composer, particularly noted for his electronic music. Ferrari was born in Paris and studied the piano under Alfred Cortot, musical analysis under Olivier Messiaen and composition under Arthur Honegger. His first works were freely atonal. In 1958 he co-founded the Groupe de Recherches Musicales with Pierre Schaeffer and François-Bernard Mâche. He taught in institutions around the world, and worked for film, theatre and radio. By the early 1960, Ferrari had begun work on his 'Hétérozygote,' a piece for magnetic tape which uses ambient environmental sounds to suggest a dramatic narrative. The use of ambient recordings was to become a distinctive part of Ferrari's musical language. Ferrari's 'Presque rien No. 1 (Le Lever du jour au bord de la mer)' [1970] is regarded as a classic of its kind. In it, Ferrari takes a day-long recording of environmental sounds at a Yugoslavian beach and, through editing, makes a piece that lasts just twenty-one minutes. It has been seen as an affirmation of John Cage's idea that music is always going on all around us, and if only we were to stop to listen to it, we would realise this. Ferrari continued to write purely instrumental music as well as his electronic pieces. He also made a number of documentary films on contemporary musicians in rehearsal, including Olivier Messiaen and Cecil Taylor.

[slought.org]