Bernard Parmegiani

Among the trailblazers of acousmatic music stood French composer Bernard Parmegiani. Extending the foundational experiments of earlier musique concrète figures such as Pierre Schaeffer, he fashioned densely layered, spatially immersive pieces intended for multi-speaker diffusion. Through landmark recordings like the mesmerizing De Natura Sonorum from 1975, Parmegiani explored fresh ways to reshape ordinary noises, sampled musical fragments, and synthesized signals into gripping sonic stories. Beyond his purely electroacoustic output, he scored numerous films, crafted radio and television jingles along with advertising spots for French outlets, and collaborated in live settings with improvisational jazz groups. His achievements earned numerous honors, among them the 1993 Golden Nica at the Prix Ars Electronica for Entre-temps and the Grand Prix du Président de la République awarded by the Académie Charles Cros for the 2008 retrospective box set L'Œuvre Musicale. Experimental electronic acts including Autechre and Aphex Twin have repeatedly cited him as a formative influence; in the twenty-first century his catalog experienced fresh visibility through multiple reissues plus previously unavailable material such as the 2017 release of the soundtrack Rock. A full-scale digital restoration of his entire recorded output commenced in 2024.

Parmegiani entered the world in Paris during 1927. Although his mother introduced him to the piano in childhood, his attention turned decisively toward musique concrète after encountering works by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry in the late 1940s. Between 1957 and 1961 he trained in acting at the Lecoq & Decroux school. He entered Schaeffer’s Groupe de Recherche Musicales in 1959 and later served as a sound engineer at the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF), eventually heading its Music/Image Division. In that capacity he produced scores for cinema and animation, created station identifications and commercial spots for broadcast media, and designed the sonic environment for public-address announcements at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The 1964 tape-and-violin piece Violostries was followed in the subsequent decade by major statements such as L’instant mobile and the audiovisual work L’Œil Écoute. Parmegiani also joined forces with jazz musicians and free-improvisation ensembles; selections from these sessions later appeared under the title Pop’eclectic. Completed in 1972, L’Enfer—drawn from Dante’s Divine Comedy—was realized jointly with François Bayle, who supplied the companion Purgatoire; the two pieces eventually appeared together on CD as Divine Comédie. Additional early releases included the LPs Chronos (1972) and Chants Magnétiques (1974). INA-GRM brought out several signature compositions, among them De Natura Sonorum, which received its premiere in 1975 and first appeared on disc in 1978.

During the 1980s Parmegiani gradually adopted computer-assisted methods. The ambitious three-part cycle La Création du Monde, issued in 1986, later received a Victoire de la Musique prize in the contemporary-music category. He departed the GRM in 1992 and established a private studio in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, although INA-GRM continued to document later projects such as La Mémoire des Sons (2002). The twelve-disc anthology L’Œuvre Musicale appeared in 2008, while Recollection GRM/Editions Mego initiated a vinyl reissue series beginning with L’Œil Écoute/Dedans-Dehors in 2012. Parmegiani passed away in Paris on November 21, 2013. Following his death, further archival material surfaced, including the 2017 soundtrack Rock and two volumes of Mémoire Magnétique devoted to his film and television scores. The Complete Works initiative, launched in 2024, has undertaken the digital re-release of every composition he created.