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Bernard Parmegiani (1927) is a French composer of musique concrete who trained
(1959) under Pierre Schaeffer in person.
Originally a sound engineer and a mime,
his first major composition was the theater piece Violostries (1964), compiled on the double-disc Violostries (Ina-GRM, 1992), that also contains
Pour en Finir Avec le Pouvoir d'Orphee (1972),
Exercisme 3 (1986),
Le Present Compose' (1991),
etc.
Pop'eclectic (Earphone, 2001) collects material from 1966-73, in particular the collage of musical snippets Du Pop A l'Ane and the free improvisation of a jazz combo against an electronic tape of Jazzex.
La Memoire Des Sons (Ina-GRM, 2002) contains three pieces from three
decades:
Capture Ephemere (1967),
the 21-minute Sons-Jeu (1987), the lyrical and varied 24-minute La Memoire des Sons (2001).
Another ambitious project was
the "imaginary concert" La Roue Ferris (1971).
After a brief parenthesis in the USA, and three musical videos (L'Oil Ecoute, 1973; Jeux d'Artifices, 1979; L'Ecran Transparent, 1973), Parmegiani began to "jam" with jazz and rock groups, juxtaposing their improvisations to his electronic compositions.
Chants Magnetiques (Fractal, 2007), composed in 1974, consists of
nine abstract vignettes that straddle the border between
Musique concrete, psychedelic music and Brian Eno's Before And After Science.
La Creation du Monde (Ina-GRM, 1986) contains his masterpiece, La Creation Du Monde (1982-1984), a phantasmagoric mythological suite of electronic collage that evokes an hyper-kinetic version of Karlheinz Stockhausen.
The extreme rarefaction of Moins L'Infini, evoking microsounds of
quantum lattices, the terrible storms of Instant 0, the contrasting
android and organic flows of Premieres Forces, evoking the emergence
of form out of chaos, establish a form of art which is interior as much
as exterior.
Lumiere is a catastrophic composition that creates a highly dynamic
soundscape by employing a broad spectrum of timbres.
Cellules mimicks the first moves by the first living things, and
Polyphonie evokes the way they multiplied and become frantic
communities: suddenly the world is filled with angst. The crescendo of
tension leads to Expression 2, where the confusing concert of voices
self-implodes.
The whole "symphony" stands as a powerful statement
about the emotional power of musique concrete, equal if not superior to the
means of the symphonic orchestra.
The two lengthy suites of De Natura Sonorum (Ina-GRM, 1990), derived
from De Natura Sonorum (1975),
added live instrumentation to his abstract electronic soundscapes, frequently combining the droning sounds emitted by the instruments with the dense and wild textures spun by the machines.
The double-disc Divine Comedie (Magison, 1995) contains a disc with
Parmegiani's L'Enfer (1971) and Paradis (1974) and a disc for Francois Bayle's music.
Sonare (Ina-GRM, 2002) contains the dreamy five-movement suite Sonare (1997), which opens with a few bars from Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
Other compositions include:
L'Echo du Miroir (1980),
Rouge Mort (1988),
Entre Temps (1992),
etc.
JazzEx (Fractal, 2005)
collects some of his earliest works: JazzEx (1966),
Pop Eclectic (1969), musique concrete with natural sounds,
Du Pop a l'Ane (1969), a collage of pop and classical music,
Et Apres (1973), a tango for bandoneon.
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