Bernard Parmegiani (1927 - 2013) was a French composer of musique concrete … Read Full Bio ↴Bernard Parmegiani (1927 - 2013) was a French composer of musique concrete who trained (1959) under Pierre Schaeffer.
Raised amidst two pianos, Bernard Parmegiani grew up under the Sign of Sound, listening to the everyday scales practised by his mother, a teacher, and to the virtuoso repertoire of his step-father.
He was taken on as a sound man first on the radio and later on TV, which is where he conducted his first experiments with "bit twiddling" on tape. During this time he was also studying mime with Marcel Decroux and later at Jacques Lecoq's theatre school, which gave him an awareness of the plasticity of space, a lesson that he would draw on in his later compositions and in the architecture of his sound universe.
Then he met Pierre Schaeffer, who encouraged him to attend a training course in electro-acoustic music (1959) and shortly after he joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (1960), of which he was to remain a full member right up until 1992.
Schaeffer put Bernard Parmegiani in charge of the Music/Image unit of the ORTF's Research Departement, where he went on the compose the music for both full-length and short films made by the likes of Robert Lapoujade, Peter Foldés, Piotr Kamler, Valerian Borowczyck, Pierre Kast, Jacques Baratier and Peter Kassovitz, amongst others. This proved to be a first class training ground for learning how to deal with the problems of musical form as these relate to time, and how to overcome the constraints imposed by the medium of the cinema. It was here that he learned to exercise his freedom of creation, albeit within the framework of having to respect the time for which an image was displayed on the screen and having to reflect the contents of films of which he was not the author. He also wrote the music for several jingles ( for France Inter and Roissy Airport and so ...) and others advertisements, as well as songs and music written for television, the ballet or the theatre. All of this was good practice, and it later encouraged him to create pieces of music that, when the sound was heard within the context of the stage setting would become the occasion for the humorous or dramatic game.
In 1964, he composed Violostries, his first work for the concert hall (music for tape and violin), first performed at the Royan Festival by the violonist Devy Erlih. There then followed 40 years of uninterrupted research and musical creations built out of an ongoing fight that led him to regard bodies of sound as living bodies. He took a keen interest in those areas in which the improvisation techniques used by jazz musicians met with electro-acoustic music, working with Jean- Louis Chautemps and Bernad Vitet along the way: Jazzex. Today, Parmegiani's own output, primarily made up of sounds recorded on tape, includes more than 70 pieces of concert work.
His long association and familiarity with the moving image led to his developing a keen interest in video art and he made three music video: L'œil Ecoute (1973), l'Ecran transparent et Jeux d'artifice (1979).
Except for some mixed pieces, his work as a whole takes the form of music for « fixed sound », coming within the scope of the large repertoire of electro-acoustic music. Among the catalogue of works by Bernard Parmegiani (works for concert), some of the titles testify more particularly to his musical path: Violostries (1965), Capture éphémère (1968), l'Enfer, after The Divine Comedy from Dante (1972), Pour en finir avec le pouvoir d'Orphée (1971-1972), De natura sonorum (1974-1975), La création du monde (1982-1984), le cycle Plain temps (1991-1993), Sonare (1996), La Mémoire des sons (2000-2001), Espèces d'espace (2002-2003) and Au gré du souffle s'envole le son (2006).
Raised amidst two pianos, Bernard Parmegiani grew up under the Sign of Sound, listening to the everyday scales practised by his mother, a teacher, and to the virtuoso repertoire of his step-father.
He was taken on as a sound man first on the radio and later on TV, which is where he conducted his first experiments with "bit twiddling" on tape. During this time he was also studying mime with Marcel Decroux and later at Jacques Lecoq's theatre school, which gave him an awareness of the plasticity of space, a lesson that he would draw on in his later compositions and in the architecture of his sound universe.
Then he met Pierre Schaeffer, who encouraged him to attend a training course in electro-acoustic music (1959) and shortly after he joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (1960), of which he was to remain a full member right up until 1992.
Schaeffer put Bernard Parmegiani in charge of the Music/Image unit of the ORTF's Research Departement, where he went on the compose the music for both full-length and short films made by the likes of Robert Lapoujade, Peter Foldés, Piotr Kamler, Valerian Borowczyck, Pierre Kast, Jacques Baratier and Peter Kassovitz, amongst others. This proved to be a first class training ground for learning how to deal with the problems of musical form as these relate to time, and how to overcome the constraints imposed by the medium of the cinema. It was here that he learned to exercise his freedom of creation, albeit within the framework of having to respect the time for which an image was displayed on the screen and having to reflect the contents of films of which he was not the author. He also wrote the music for several jingles ( for France Inter and Roissy Airport and so ...) and others advertisements, as well as songs and music written for television, the ballet or the theatre. All of this was good practice, and it later encouraged him to create pieces of music that, when the sound was heard within the context of the stage setting would become the occasion for the humorous or dramatic game.
In 1964, he composed Violostries, his first work for the concert hall (music for tape and violin), first performed at the Royan Festival by the violonist Devy Erlih. There then followed 40 years of uninterrupted research and musical creations built out of an ongoing fight that led him to regard bodies of sound as living bodies. He took a keen interest in those areas in which the improvisation techniques used by jazz musicians met with electro-acoustic music, working with Jean- Louis Chautemps and Bernad Vitet along the way: Jazzex. Today, Parmegiani's own output, primarily made up of sounds recorded on tape, includes more than 70 pieces of concert work.
His long association and familiarity with the moving image led to his developing a keen interest in video art and he made three music video: L'œil Ecoute (1973), l'Ecran transparent et Jeux d'artifice (1979).
Except for some mixed pieces, his work as a whole takes the form of music for « fixed sound », coming within the scope of the large repertoire of electro-acoustic music. Among the catalogue of works by Bernard Parmegiani (works for concert), some of the titles testify more particularly to his musical path: Violostries (1965), Capture éphémère (1968), l'Enfer, after The Divine Comedy from Dante (1972), Pour en finir avec le pouvoir d'Orphée (1971-1972), De natura sonorum (1974-1975), La création du monde (1982-1984), le cycle Plain temps (1991-1993), Sonare (1996), La Mémoire des sons (2000-2001), Espèces d'espace (2002-2003) and Au gré du souffle s'envole le son (2006).
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Natures Éphémères
Bernard Parmegiani Lyrics
No lyrics text found for this track.
The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
krakus5813
First part:
0:01 I. Incidences/ Résonances
4:02 II. Accidents/ Harmoniques
8:52 III. Géologie Sonore
13:37 IV. Etude élastique
20:13 V. Conjugaison du Timbre
Second part:
25:30 I. Natures éphémères
29:39 II. Matières induites
33:10 III. Ondes Croisées
35:30 IV. Pleins et Déliés
39:54 V. Points contre Champs
krakus5813
First part:
0:01 I. Incidences/ Résonances
4:02 II. Accidents/ Harmoniques
8:52 III. Géologie Sonore
13:37 IV. Etude élastique
20:13 V. Conjugaison du Timbre
Second part:
25:30 I. Natures éphémères
29:39 II. Matières induites
33:10 III. Ondes Croisées
35:30 IV. Pleins et Déliés
39:54 V. Points contre Champs
Matías Couriel
No! Take for example the first piece. It was made by modifying all the resonances of the attacks (resonances are electronic, attacks are acoustic). That take millions of hours in the analogic studio. Besides the technical part, "de natura sonorum" is really the masterpiece of electroacoustic music. Even today it sounds so actual.
petre Tepner
Ever get the impression the French avant-garde crowd spend more time thinking up their titles than writing their music?
educostanzo
After repeated listens, I have to say that I find this a fantastic record. This is as abstract as my wandering musical mind "gets" but it's just amazing how every single sound in this album has a completely distinguished character. They bubble, bounce, grind and soar through the ambiences, and the result it's sometimes tickling, sometimes abrasive, sometimes even melodic, but ALWAYS surprising. I'd really like to know if this record exerted some direct influence on artists such as Aphex Twin (Druqks era), because they aurally have much in common. Thanks for the upload!
Tentsio
Very direct influence on Aphex Twin and many other electronic music artists. Parmegiani is one of the greatest.
Thomas Patteson
This is a true masterpiece of electronic music, and of 20th-century music all told.
cut
its so fucked up and off the and denies everything.. Ive been a weird music nut for like 40 years and ENO ertc thank gawd I found this ! love kraftwerk and old pink floyd THIS shit is GOLD
Marco Verdi
The fact is that this kind of music is made for one to experience its decoding while having to serach for the right tools within different zones of our brains, sometimes very far from our comfort areas. It definitely was not composed to the immediate pleasure that we more oftenly seek when we pick something up to listen to, let´s say, as our daily basis soundtrack. My tendency when getting in touch with contemporary music is to let it freely trigger reasonings that I might not be aware I had until it comes to almost chemically excite and ignite me up. That would be one reason that I, from times to times, go back to let myself interact with modern and contemporary composers. Parmegiani´s"De Natura Sonorum" or "About the Nature of The Sound" in a free translation, is one of these works. It goes well beyond (for me) a mere compilation of erratic sounds but emulates a strange succession of sounds and silences that has the wand to lead me to other principles of reasoning and reflexion. Yup, it happens with Cage, Stockhausen, Penderecky, Harry Partch, Berio, Boulez, Hindemith, Milhaud and so many other great artists. It stirs my imagination without the intoxicating power of human passions. To shorten this statement: I like it so badly. Many thanks for posting it. Cheers!
Narasimha
I have the same response to the cacophony of Merzbow.
Elisabeth Looijschelder
I love it.