Despite being born to musician parents (his mother and step-father were both pianists and piano teachers), Bernard Parmegiani did not pursue a traditional musical education. He became interested in the art of mime, studying from 1955 to 1959 with Jacques Lecoq (an esteemed practitioner in the field in the 1950s) and Maximilien Decroux (the son of Étienne Decroux, a renowned mime artist in the “pre-Marcel Marceau” era), who had, incidentally, worked with composers including Iannis Xenakis and Pierre Henry. Parmegiani subsequently embarked upon a successful career in this art, which suited his personality — he was very reserved — and saw him regularly appear on television.

During this period, he also worked as a sound technician. His activities in this field, initiated during his military service (he worked for the army’s film and documentary department), included contributions to several cinematic projects (short and feature films), television programmes, and, finally, radio plays. In this setting, he developed a secret love of “tinkering” with sound. Having by 1959 amassed considerable experience in this respect, Pierre Schaeffer invited him to work for the Groupe de Recherche Musicale in 1959 as an audio technician and assistant editor.

In this capacity, Parmegiani served as the assistant of Iannis Xenakis and Luc Ferrari, and became acquainted with numerous prominent film directors of the day. Upon also assuming a role in the Research Department at GRM, he undertook two years of study of musique concrète (notably alongside François Bayle), during which he gradually transitioned from sound engineer to composer. He went on to compose pieces for a variety of settings; in addition to some 70 acousmatic works, he also created music for film (e.g., films with puppets, short, medium-length and feature films, documentaries, advertisements, animated films, video works, etc.), mime performances, dance and theatre productions, television and radio jingles, and “sonal” works (“sound signal,” i.e., sounds associated with public spaces, the most well-known of which was undoubtedly the chimes preceding announcements at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, which remained in use from 1971 to 2005), which collectively make up a catalogue comprising some 130 works.

Parmegiani’s work may be broadly divided into two periods. From 1960 until the composition of De Natura Sonorum, he was extremely prolific, maintaining a balance between the aforementioned context-specific pieces and his output which generally respected the established methods of musique concrète. The virtuosity and humour which manifested in his recordings and editing (e.g., Violostries, L’Instant mobile, Capture éphémère, La Roue Ferris, etc.), as well as his frequent collaborations with jazz and pop musicians — which gave rise to a string of unique cross-over works including Jazzex, Et après…, Du pop à l’âne, Pop’ eclectic, and Pop secret — contributed to establishing his reputation as one of the most important figures in the field of “art and sound on fixed media.” Starting in 1970, Parmegiani showed himself to be no less capable at mastering more formalised and refined large-scale forms, as in Enfer, Pour en finir avec le pouvoir d’Orphée, De Natura Sonorum, and*La Création du monde. His work from this time also reflects the influence of the philosophical writings of Gaston Bachelard, Vladimir Jankélévitch, and Clément Rosset, notably regarding the notion of “capturing the instant.” Various sets of works illustrate the composer’s creative dialogue with philosophical texts:Plain-Temps,Le Présent composé,Entre-temps,La Mémoire des sons*, etc.

As Director of the Music/Image Division in the Research Department of French National Radio and Television (ORTF), he remained closely affiliated with the INA-GRM until 1992, at which time he established his own studio, known as “Fabricasons,” in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (in the south of France). His interest in exploring the relationship between music and image, and his discovery of the “art video” genre while on a study trip in the United States in the early-1970s, gave rise to multimedia works such as L’œil écoute, Jeux d’artifices, and Écran transparent (the latter produced at WDR in Cologne).

Parmegiani, an artist who defies easy classification, composed few works with acoustic instruments (despite the fact that one of his early pieces, Violostries, is for violin and tape), favouring instead electronic instruments and fixed media. Through his work on synthesis and his contributions to the fixed media canon, Parmegiani, a great admirer of Stockhausen and with the emphatic backing of Schaeffer, not only inspired a generation of contemporary musicians, but also had, and continues to have, a significant influence on sound artists of all ages, styles, and persuasions.

Awards, Grants, and Prizes

• Prix Italia (1976)
• “Grand Prix” from the Académie du Disque (1979)
• SACEM Composers’ “Grand Prix” (1981)
• Prize for Contemporary Music Composition, Fifth Victoires de la Musique (1989)
• Magisterium Prize, Bourges International Competition (1991)
• Knight of the Order of Merit (France; 1991)
• “Golden Nica” Prize from the Ars Electronica Festival for Entre-temps (Linz; 1993)
• “Coup de Cœur” from the Charles Cros Academy for Portrait Polychrome (CDMC/INA-GRM; 2003)
• “President of the Republic” Prize from the Charles Cros Academy for the twelve-CD box set presenting the majority of his catalogue of works (2008)