Pierre Henry (9 December 1927 – 5 July 2017) was a French composer, conside… Read Full Bio ↴Pierre Henry (9 December 1927 – 5 July 2017) was a French composer, considered a pioneer of the musique concrète genre of electronic music.

Pierre Henry was born in Paris, France, and began experimenting at the age of 15 with sounds produced by various objects. He became fascinated with the integration of noise into music. He studied with Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen, and Félix Passerone at the Paris Conservatoire from 1938 to 1948 (Dhomont 2001).

Between 1949 and 1958, Henry worked at the Club d'Essai studio at RTF, which had been founded by Pierre Schaeffer in 1943 (Dhomont 2001). During this period, he wrote the 1950 piece Symphonie pour un homme seul, in cooperation with Schaeffer; he also composed the first musique concrète to appear in a commercial film, the 1952 short film "Astrologie ou le miroir de la vie." Henry has scored numerous additional films and ballets.

Two years after leaving the RTF, he founded with Jean Baronnet the first private electronic studio in France, the Apsone-Cabasse Studio (Dhomont 2001).

Among Henry's works is the 1967 ballet Messe pour le temps présent (Dhomont 2001), a collaboration with choreographer Maurice Béjart that debuted in Avignon (Rubin 2001). In 1970 Henry collaborated with British rock band Spooky Tooth on the album Ceremony (Rubin 2001, 308).

Composer Christopher Tyng was heavily inspired by Henry's "Psyché Rock" when writing the theme to the popular animated cartoon show Futurama. The theme is so reminiscent of the Henry's song, it is considered a variation of the original (Cohen 2001).

Discography
1950 Symphonie pour un homme seul (in collaboration with Pierre Schaeffer)
1951 Le microphone bien temperé
Musique sans titre
Concerto des ambiguities mit Klavier
1952 First film music with musique concrète for Jean Gremillons film Astrologie
1953 Orphée 53, experimental opera for Donaueschingen Festival, first stage play[contradictory] with musique concrète (together with Pierre Schaeffer)
1955 Arcane (ballet)
1956 Haut voltage (ballet)
1958 Coexistence
1959 Investigations
1961 La Noire à Soixante
1962 Le voyage (Limelight Records) (also Mercury Living Presence SR90482)
1963 La Reine Verte (ballet)
1963 Variations pour une porte et un soupir (Variations For a Door And a Sigh) Limelight Records LS 86059
1967 Messe pour le temps présent (in cooperation with Michel Colombier), which features "Psyché Rock" on track 2 on side A after a prologue of 1:47 minutes
1968 L’Apocalypse de Jean (Die Apokalypse des Johannes) with spoken text
1969 Ceremony (with Spooky Tooth)
1971 Nijinsky, clown de dieu (ballet)
1973 Machine Danse
1973 Kyldex I (cybernetic ballet)
1975 Futuriste, in memory of the Italian Futurists Luigi Russolo
1979 La Dixième Symphonie, tribute to Ludwig van Beethoven
1986 La Dixième Symphonie De Beethoven
1990 Le livre des morts égyptien (Book of the Dead)
1997 Interieur/Exterrieur
2015 Choix d'oeuvres de 1950-1985 (Selections of works 1950-1985 on VOD Records Cat VOD133 Edition of 400 on 10xVinyl records)

TRACKS

Genre not found

Artist not found

Album not found

Search results not found

Song not found

The Moving Finger
Pierre Henry Lyrics

No lyrics text found for this track.

The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos

Comments from YouTube:

Cosmic Pickle

Wow-wonderful interview with one of my lifelong favorite musicians, ad a nice guy as well. I had no idea who Riley was around 1978 when I saw, in the 'Import' section of a favorite record store, the very same LP (French) of 'Lifespan' that we see there on the table. I bought it thinking Riley was some obscure European musician, simply because the back cover photo of Riley sitting at the big organ suggested to me that I would probably dig the music Plus I love albums where one musician plays all the parts himself, and indeed Riley also does saxophone, voice, and tabla on this recording as well. Matter of fact decades later I finally bought a VHS (and even later a DVD) of the film.
Eventually I learned much more about Riley and his background, being respected as a serious musician and 'minimalist' founder.
I can still recall driving home with the LP on a cold winter day, getting home and playing it, over 4 1/2 decades ago. It became, and remains to this day one of my very favorite albums, and the first album I ever transferred from LP into my computer when music software and CD burners came into existence. Though, finally, a CD of 'Lifespan' was released many years later which i'm thrilled to also own.
There was a very brief 'extra' on the 'Lifespan' movie DVD about Riley and the soundtrack...
-Gary