Luc Ferrari


Luc Ferrari was a French composer of Italian heritage and a pioneer in musique concrète and electroacoustic music. He was a founding member of RTF's Groupe de Recherches Musicales, working alongside composers such as Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry.

Biography

Ferrari was born in Paris, and was trained in music at a very young age. He studied the piano under Alfred Cortot, musical analysis under Olivier Messiaen, and composition under Arthur Honegger. His first works were freely atonal. A case of tuberculosis in his youth interrupted his career as a pianist. From then on he mostly concentrated on musical composition. During this illness he had the opportunity to become acquainted with the radio receiver, and with pioneers such as Schönberg, Berg, and Webern.
In 1954, Ferrari went to the United States to meet Edgard Varèse, whose Déserts he had heard on the radio, and had impressed him. This seems to have had a great effect on him, with the tape part in Déserts serving as inspiration for Ferrari to use magnetic tape in his own music. In 1958 he co-founded the Groupe de Recherches Musicales with Pierre Schaeffer and François-Bernard Mâche. He taught in institutions around the world, and worked for film, theatre and radio. By the early 1960, Ferrari had begun work on his Hétérozygote, a piece for magnetic tape which uses ambient environmental sounds to suggest a dramatic narrative. The use of ambient recordings was to become a distinctive part of Ferrari's musical language.
Ferrari's Presque rien No. 1 'Le Lever du jour au bord de la mer is regarded as a classic of its kind. In it, Ferrari takes a day-long recording of environmental sounds at a Yugoslavian beach and, through editing, makes a piece that lasts just twenty-one minutes. It has been seen as an affirmation of John Cage's idea that music is always going on all around us, and if only we were to stop to listen to it, we would realise this. Ferrari continued to write purely instrumental music as well as his tape pieces. He also made a number of documentary films on contemporary composers in rehearsal, including Olivier Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Ferrari died in Arezzo, Italy on 22 August 2005, at age 76.

Discography

  • Acousmatrix
  • Unheimlich schön
  • L'Escalier des aveugles
  • Presque rien
  • Piano-piano
  • Cellule 75
  • Interrupteur / Tautologos III
  • Chansons pour le corps – Et si tout entière maintenant
  • Danses Organiques cinéma pour l'oreille
  • Far-West news
  • Cycle des souvenirs – Exploitation des concepts No.2
  • Tautologos and other early electronic works
  • Comedia dell'amore 224
  • Impro-micro-acoustique
  • Collection
  • Les Anecdotiques
  • Archives sauvées des eaux
  • Son mémorisé
  • Far-West news episodes 2 and 3
  • Et tournent les sons
  • Les ProtoRythmiques
  • Didascalies
  • Sonopsys
  • in OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music / 1943 – 1980
  • in Asia – Trio d'argent
  • in An anthology of noise & electronic music / vol. #2
  • in Early modulations : vintage volts
  • in Archives GRM – CD 2/5
  • Chantal, or the portrait of a villager
  • Archives Génétiquement Modifiées – mémorized sound
  • Société II
  • À la recherche du rythme perdu
  • Madame de Shanghaï
  • Archives sauvées des eaux – Luc Ferrari with Otomo Yoshihide.
  • Labyrinthe de violence
  • Sexolidad
  • Dialogue Ordinaire avec la Machine
  • INA-GRM Box
  • Chantal
  • DIDASCALIES 2 ou Trois en quête de notes
  • TRANQUILLES IMPATIENCES
  • EPHÉMÈRE I & II
  • EXERCICES D'IMPROVISATION
  • PIANO & PERCUSSION WORKS
for piano and percussion
  • LUC FERRARI " Madame de Shanghai " – " Après Presque Rien " – " Visage 2 "
  • VISITATION – 25'23
  • Souvenir, Souvenir
  • JETZT ''ou PROBABLEMENT MON QUOTIDIEN IL EST LA, DANS LA CONFUSION DES LIEUX ET DES MOMENTS – Hörspiel 1982 – 1 h. 45'


  • PROGRAMME COMMUN Luc + Brunhild Ferrari
  • LUC FERRARI « PRESQUE RIEN »
  • L. FERRARI''

    CD and DVD releases

  • Didascalies
  • Presque rien avec Luc Ferrari
  • ''Les Archives sauvées des Eaux''

    Recent book releases

  • Collective book, edited by Brunhild Ferrari : Luc Ferrari complete works, London May 2019, 457 p.. Published par Ecstatic peace library.
  • Presque Rien avec Luc Ferrari
  • Sonopsys No. 4 Luc Ferrari
  • Luc Ferrari Portraits Polychromes
  • The Politics of Presque Rien by Eric Drott
  • Luc Ferrari in: In the Blink of an Ear:
  • Luc Ferrari in : Silence, les couleurs du prisme & la mécanique du temps qui passe. Les Presque Rien – Et Tournent les sons Dans la Garrique by Daniel Caux
  • Syntone News and Critique of the Radio-Art
  • The Bells Angels No. 2
  • ''The Bells Angels''