Sound Portraits Radio {EP6} Bernard Parmegiani

ROBERNARD PARMEGIANI

EPISODE 6

Bernard Parmegiani’s rich body of work, spanning nearly 50 years, stands as among the most important in electronic music, influencing generations of artists within the academy and beyond – with the likes of Aphex Twin, Autechre, Keith Fullerton Whitman and Sonic Youth all citing him as a major influence. Parmegiani initially trained as a mime, a practice he often drew on when describing his music. It was Pierre Schaeffer who, in 1961, convinced him to start composing. In Schaeffer’s musique concrète, the building blocks of composition were not notes and rests, but recordings. Pieces were created through collage and the transformation of acoustic sounds on tape. It was this technique that Parmegiani developed so expansively from the 1960s onwards. Animated and dynamic, Parmegiani’s work is especially distinctive for its kinetic physicality and visceral presence. This episode of Sound Portraits Radio is hosted by Doron Sadja.

“Sometimes, in order to analyse a sound, I act it out by means of gestures before giving it its definitive form. It enables me to diagnose sounds and see if I’m comfortable with them.”
Bernard Parmegiani
“In De Natura Sonorum I distanced myself from the power of sound, from what I call the power of Orpheus. Orpheus charmed the plants and animals With his lyre, and in the pieces I composed prior to De Natura Sonorum I was under the spell of the sounds I created. Sounds that evolved and that I found satisfying and I left it at that. People always used to to compliment me on the beauty of my sounds in my first pieces! But beautiful sounds don’t necessarily constitute interesting beautiful or interesting pieces of music. Whereas in De Natura Sonorum I set myself many more constraints: I placed the sounds as you do letters, one after the other, so as to create forms and sequences,” he says, adding almost apologetically, “That piece has since become a classic of electroacoustic music.”
Bernard Parmegiani
“I have a huge collection of sounds, and I’m a little bit like Pierre Henry in that I work a lot with old sounds. I can rework them and transform them into something completely different,” he remarks, adding, “Of course, there are sounds that resist all forms of treatment. You can torture them any way you like, but you’ll still be able to identify their origin. It’s like a fragment of Mozart: you can reverse it, halve its speed, or add echo to it, but it will always be recognizable as Mozart.”
Bernard Parmegiani
“The first time it was performed, people said, that’s not Parmegiani. But as far as I was concerned, that meant I had been successful and that I still had something left to say.”
Bernard Parmegiani
“I am not interested only in music, but also in ideas that can be grafted onto it. These are the influences that nourish my pieces.”
Bernard Parmegiani

Sound Portraits is a series of lectures/listening sessions, curated by Doron Sadja, focusing on the work of iconic composers who have paved the way for contemporary electronic music. Started in 2015 as a live event at Spektrum in Berlin, the series quickly grew and exists now as both a live lecture series and a radio show on Cashmere Radio. After an introduction of each artist’s life and work, we listen to a selection of excerpts and complete works from the artist’s repertoire. Besides providing an opportunity to introduce these seminal artists to a new audience, the Sound Portraits series also offers an open forum to engage in group listening in a quiet atmosphere.

Doron Sadja is an American artist, composer, and curator whose work explores modes of perception and the experience of sound, light, and space. Find out more at www.doron.sadja.com

SOUND PORTRAITS BERNARD PARMEGIANI

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