Pierre Henry was born on 9 December 1927. He began studying music at the age of seven. Between 1937 and 1947, he studied with Olivier Messiaen, Félix Passerone, and Nadia Boulanger at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMP). From 1944 to 1950, he composed several instrumental pieces and worked as an orchestral pianist and percussionist. During this time he began researching experimental instrument building.

In 1948, he composed his first film score for Voir l’invisible, which was performed on acoustic objects. The following year, in 1949, he began working with Pierre Schaeffer and together they premiered Symphonie pour un homme seul in March 1950. He oversaw the work of the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC) for RTF radio from 1950 to 1958.

In 1958, he left RTF and founded his own studio, called APSOME, which was located in the rue Cardinet in Paris, which was the first private experimental and electroacoustic music studio. Working alone, he pursued his research using new techniques and electronic procedures that he had invented himself. Unceasingly, he explored an uncharted musical universe, surpassing and adapting constantly evolving technologies with a surehanded mastery that included even the most classical forms of musical practice.

He funded the studio himself from 1958 to 1982, writing numerous scores for film, stage, and advertising. In 1955, the choreographer Maurice Béjart used Henry’s Symphonie pour un homme seul, after which the two artists collaborated on fifteen other ballets. Henry also collaborated with choreographers such as George Balanchine, Carolyn Carlson, Merce Cunningham, Alwin Nikolaïs, and Maguy Marin. Notable among his many film scores was the celebrated Man With A Movie Camera, directed by Dziga Vertov. He also collaborated in performances with visual artists such as Yves Klein, Jean Degottex, Georges Mathieu, Nicolas Schöffer, and Thierry Vincens.

Between 1967 and 1980, Philips produced eighteen albums of Pierre Henry’s compositions as part of its Prospective du 21° siècle, collection, as well as a nineteen-album set featuring thirty-two of Henry’s major works.

In 1982, Henry became the artistic director of the new sound studio SON/RE, in the twelfth arrondissement of Paris, which was underwritten by the French Ministry of Culture and the city of Paris. More than seventy new works were created there, including Intérieur/Extérieur (1996), Histoire Naturelle (1997), La Dixième remix (1998), Les sept péchés capitaux (1998), Une Tour de Babel (1999), Tam Tam du Merveilleux (2000), Concerto sans orchestre (2000), Hypermix (2001), Poussière de soleils (2001), Dracula (2002), Carnet de Venise (2002), Zones d’ombre (2002), Labyrinthe! (2003), Faits divers (2003), Duo (2003), Lumières (2004), and Voyage initiatique (performed on 13-27 March 2005 at the composer’s home in a series of evening concerts titled Pierre Henry chez lui III), as well as Comme une symphonie, hommage à Jules Verne 2005, Orphée dévoilé, Pulsations, which premiered in Riga in July 2007, andObjectif terre which premiered 11 July 2007 at the Festival d’Avignon and on the Esplanade de la Défense in Paris on 4 August 2007 in front of a 6000-person audience.

For his 80th birthday, Henry composed three new pieces, Utopia, which premiered at La Saline Royale d’Arc et Senans; Trajectoire, which premiered at the Salle Olivier Messiaen de Radio France on his birthday; and Pleins jeux, which premiered on 20 March 2008 at the Cité de la Musique. In 2008, a series of 22 concerts titled Une heure chez Pierre Henry were held during the Paris Quartier d’Été festival. In October of that same year, his Un monde lacéré, a tribute to the painter Jacques Villegié, premiered at the Pompidou Center. Henry then composed Utopia Hip-Hop, Capriccio, and a new version of Dieu based on the work of Victor Hugo, played by Jean-Paul Farré in Pierre Henry’s home on 20 July and 8 August 2009.

Pierre Henry created a reconstruction of the original version of Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950) using the original recordings on flexible 78 rpm records, recut and digitally mastered by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, titled Symphonie collector, whose broadcast premiere was on 9 January 2010, by Radio France. As a tribute to Johann-Sébastien Bach, he composed L’Art de la fugue odyssée, which premiered at the Eglise Saint-Eustache in Paris as part of a series of seven concerts for the Paris Quartier d’Été festival in July 2011. Le fil de la vie premiered at the Cité de la Musique in Paris on 29 September 2012. Henry composed two pieces in 2013, Fragments rituels and Crescendo.

His work has been performed extensively in concerts the world over, always with tremendous attention to spatialization. An innovator in the field of sound exploration, a fervent proponent of a free and open aesthetic, and a pioneer in technological research, Pierre Henry opened the way to many new musical worlds, notably in the field of electronic music. Since 1995, an entire generation of contemporary musicians has paid tribute to Henry for his inventions, most of which are used in technology manufactured today. Pierre Henry’s modernity made him, according to the newspaper Le Monde, “the great generational reconciler” (July 2000).

Awards and Honors

Grand Prix of the Académie Charles Cros 1970 - Grand Prix National de la Musique 1985 - SACEM Grand Prix 1987 - Victoires de la Musique 1988 - Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris 1996 - Grand Prix de la SACD 1996 - Karl Sczuka Prize 1997 - Honored by the Victoires de la Musique for his entire body of work 1998 - Qwartz Electronic Music Award 2005 - Prix du Président de la République de l’Académie Charles Cros 2005 for his entire body of work - Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur - Commandeur des Arts et Lettres - Officier de l’ordre du Mérite.