Pierre Schaeffer

Creator of musique concrète and pioneer of electronic music, Pierre Schaeffer was the founder of the GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales). Born in Nancy on August 14, 1910, he worked as an engineer in Strasbourg before beginning his career in 1936 with French radio broadcasting. First a broadcaster, then a producer, he pursued sound research applied to music, creating the Studio d'Essai de la RTF (Radio-Télédiffusion Française) in 1943, then the Groupe de musique concrète in 1951, which became the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in 1958. His work with magnetic tapes and noise samples culminated in pieces of varying lengths, including Cinq Études de Bruits (1948), Suite pour 14 Instruments (1949) and Variations sur une flûte mexicaine (1950). He collaborated with Pierre Henry, notably on the Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950) and the stage music Orphée 53 (1953), before leaving on a government mission overseas. Returning to Paris in 1961, he founded the Research Department of RTF (then ORTF from 1964), which he headed until his retirement in 1975. As a researcher, inventor, theorist, musicologist and teacher, Pierre Schaeffer worked with composers such as Luc Ferrari, Iannis Xenakis, Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez. He continued to produce Études d'après divers supports sonores until 1960, when he stopped creating collages to devote himself to his duties as administrator of the GRM and teacher at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris (1968-1980). In 1975, he returned to composition with the piece La Trièdre Fertile, in collaboration with Bernard Dürr. Author of numerous works on music theory, the composer retired from musical life in 1990 and died on August 19, 1995, at the age of 85.

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