Bernard parmegiani

Parmegiani = charming, tho' he did look a lot like a compacted James Robertson Justice! Complete w/ funky cardigan (see also: Luc Ferrari and Stockhausen!)

I honestly haven't heard anything of his that I haven't liked, so I'd recommend picking up anything of his that you can find.

that's a damn shame.

''Complete w/ funky cardigan''

yeah andrew I've seen a pic he looks really cool.

nom- will do.

I agree de natura sonorum & creation du monde are the places to start, the former for constant explosions and fizzling bent sculpture, the latter for the sprawling sparkling unfolding drone of ten million chisled details

violostries is a 2 CD overview, disc one 60's/70's disc two 80's/90's. disc one has the title piece from 1964, beautiful hyper-symphony built entirely from recordings of a solo violin, but the Impossible Fireplace in 'dedans-dehors' from 1977 is what I play for people who ask me if musique concrete is really an art form.

la memoire des sons has two recent works but kicks off with 'capture ephemere' from 1967, the reason to have this. sounds of birds in flight that slowly remove themselves until they suggest vivid images that can't actually exist. listening to this piece, post-LP5 autechre makes a lot more sense.

jazz-ex has four late 60's pieces, some plunderphonic pop cut-ups, some free jazz improvs augmented by tapework. released earlier as pop eclectic. this one has a couple of good moments but maybe not his most successful overall.

l'oeil ecoute reissues two more early 70's pieces as well as one from 2003; these are sparkling cycling drones as well; individually all great, though definitely more three seperate pieces than something that makes sense as a single album.

sonare is from 1996 and I need to listen to it again

question de temps is a weird, weird thing: excerpts from many of his albums, edited together greatest hits style. there are even two remixes from french dj's who add hip hop beats (one's a little silly, the second one actually isn't bad). some pieces are exclusive to this disc though and it's assembled well; even the familiar pieces sound different with the new sequencing.

you can find several other pieces on various compilations, electronic panorama: paris and archives grm

Thanks to the various enthusiastic descriptions here I think I will look for de natura sonorum. And Milton's post is not actually the sort of thing that requires any apologies! RS's post, on the other hand (haha!)

after I posted this I chose to listen to other concrete composers then chose to listen to a ton of mainly acoustic composers...so this got lost. def pick get round to him again at some point.

but that's because I've only been able to make it through once, it's a radio play and I don't speak the language... there were definite moments in there though. give me a few moments to learn french.

this music sounds so good loud. parmegiani, bayle, ferrari, the unstoppable trio, making a hyperbolic leap into high fidelity concrete in the mid-60's. early electronic & concrete had certain fidelity issues that sealed it entirely off into it's own sound world that didn't really refer to ours too often. when real world sounds were used, the fidelity was primitive enough to serve as a qualifier. but some of the sounds in 'capture ephemere' are so vividly detailed that they achieve suspension of disbelief; they couldn't actually exist, but they proceed from the acoustic moments so seamlessly that you accept the impossible without even noticing.

also recommended: headphones!

Has anyone heard Chants Magnetiques? How does it stack up to the rest of his work from that era?

was weird that one took so long to make it to CD, it's one of the better ones. early 70's Coupigny Synth atmospheres and fields, more cycling analog drones than his concrete cut-ups of instruments & field recordings. similiar sounds to his other Coupigny Synth pieces from around then like 'La roue ferris', but shorter tracks & greater variety, I prefer the faster pacing. there's one piece with organ that reminds me that Terry Riley was hanging out in Paris around that time.

I like the sound of that. L'oeil ecoute has been my go-to Parmegiani lately just because I don't feel like I have to listen to it all in one go.

Drew Daniel has a picture of the Coupigny Synth on his flickr. With two of them you could play battleship!

if he's not too busy grading papers he's got a prime Bernard anecdote as well

Gosh

40 euros seems absurdly cheap for this. I placed my order already so hopefully they don't have any opposition to shipping to the US.

i was going to say 12 discs at that price is a steal

not seeing it listed on the order page. sold out already?

It's listed under "Bernard Parmegiani" on the order page.

Also available through electrocd.com here.

I was going to post that link earlier on!

thx

$80?

These are the things I think not currently on CD:

CD 8 Exercismes (68’39)
CD 9 Litaniques - Rouge mort : thanatos - E pericoloso sporgersi (63’51).
CD 12 Immer / Sounds – Espèces d’espaces - Au gré du souffle, le son s’envole - Le son s’envole - Rêveries (67’01)

excerpts appear within Violostries, but these appear to be complete. also some of the timings on this set could indicate longer versions than the CDs that are already out.

oh I'll probably buy it

Milton, have you ever ordered directly from INA? There were only two shipping rates available and it seems like 5 euros isn't enough to ship a 12 CD box to the US.

I'm in the US so it's always made more sense just to order from electrocd

looks like CD 2 also rounds up some 60's compilation tracks I don't have, and CD 6 has two things I haven't heard of:

CD 6
6 - La table des matières (1979) - 19m02s
7 - Des mots et des sons (1977) -19m17s

even though I have the rest already, that's about 4 albums worth of things I haven't heard for my $80

My copy of the box came today. The packaging is very nice. The CDs are in flimsy slipcases but it's a nice effect to see them all stacked up. Liner notes look good, too. Bernard pictures I've never seen, an interview, write-ups on every piece in the box.

Definitely worth the $80, especially if you don't already have the CDs. I only had Violostries; De Natura Sonorum and La Creation du Monde were always out of stock whenever I'd try to order them so I've been limited to CDr's.

I haven't even absored the Archives GRM box yet so it's going to be a while before I can talk about the actual musical content here beyond what I already know. 12 discs! FFS

Reading Simey on the Parmegiani boxset here, he correctly points out that the Doors' "When the Music's Over" and "Spanish Caravan" turn up on "Du Pop à L'ane", but even more obviously so does "You're Lost Little Girl"! Also this:

"1969's "Pop' Eclectic" draws heavily on the heavy and proggy rock sounds of the day, spiced with Light Programme-style MOR and Radio 3-style solemnity. Much of the piece resembles pureed Soft Machine..."

... it is of course pureed Small Faces! The title track to "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" to be precise.

Talking of pop/ rock songs turning up in modern classical pieces, listening to Stockhausen's "Kurzwellen" (I think the version from Cologne 1969) I'd forgotten that Scott Walker, some years from his rebirth as an "avant-gardist", shows up singing "Joanna" at one point.

http://vimeo.com/14288030

1973 video by Bernard Parmegiani with accompanying musique concrete score. The source is a VHS rip, the origin of which is unclear. "L'Ecran transparent" comes from a fruitful period of audio-visual art during a residency in Köln, after Parmegiani had returned from a tour of the U.S.

Thanking you!

Seeing reports around that BP has checked out :(

Confirmed by Stephen O'Malley:

http://www.ideologic.org/news/view/rip_bernard_parmegiani_1927_2013

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NRWfSInOh6Q/UO_g_D74uJI/AAAAAAAAEtg/H6dnXkpHdCc/s640/B%2BParmegiani.png

Oh no! RIP Bernard!

Some words from KFW:

http://www.keithfullertonwhitman.com/blog/2013/11/22/bernard-parmegiani-rip-1927-2013

Brief obit in FACT:

http://www.factmag.com/2013/11/22/r-i-p-pioneering-electronic-composer-bernard-parmegiani-1927-2013/

RIP. Was lucky enough to see him play some of his music at Autechtre's ATP - a smallish group of admirers and enthusiasts (including Jim O'Rourke) huddled round his mixing desk in the centre of a huge ballroom, while fantastic natural and unnatural pinged around the space.

unnatural SOUNDS

instant zero

didn't know the Publison featured so heavily on 'La Création du Monde' but Keith's post makes it obvious. that's a magic box; it was expensive and few composers got their hands on one (Carl Stone's early 80's live sampling pieces like "Shibucho" are a good example of what this box can do when you start with recognizable source material), but it's really hitting me how Parmegiani made it sound like his own instrument, he instantly made new gear fit in the continuum of his own music. He did that to a degree with that Coupigny beast as well but it's really hitting me with the Publison; I'm usually pretty good at recognizing which gear is being used on which classic pieces of electronic music and I know 'Création' by heart, the Publison should have been staring me in the face but all I heard was Parmegiani, the master

http://reynoldsretro.blogspot.com/2008/08/bernard-parmegiani-loeuvre-musicale-en.html

listening to 'création du monde' right now, v relaxing. wish i couldve seen him perform

really sad about this, we are booked to perform in paris at the "presences electroniques" festival in march of 2014 and the lineup is/was a dream team for us: nurse with wound, lionel marchetti, robert ashley, bernard parmegiani, mark fell . . . and now we're going to miss our chance to hear him diffuse his work. I met Parmegiani once, in Paris, at Radio France, and we talked about his work. I can still remember his utterly piercing eyes and very intense manner. So much admiration and love for his work, its density, its articulation. R.I.P.

re-visiting the 12 disc box. so detailed, inventive, and modern. one of the greatest to ever do it. r.i.p. :-/

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-llACmHohmok/Uo_Lo0ypRJI/AAAAAAAAFn8/QtUyqLi0wPs/s1600/1468705_10200219955102024_58841413_n.jpg

:-(

beautiful

Retrospective nxt wk in London

Reading Simey on the Parmegiani boxset here, he correctly points out that the Doors' "When the Music's Over" and "Spanish Caravan" turn up on "Du Pop à L'ane", but even more obviously so does "You're Lost Little Girl"! Also this:

"1969's "Pop' Eclectic" draws heavily on the heavy and proggy rock sounds of the day, spiced with Light Programme-style MOR and Radio 3-style solemnity. Much of the piece resembles pureed Soft Machine..."

... it is of course pureed Small Faces! The title track to "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" to be precise.

Playing this the other day I noticed there's also a sample from "The Zodiac" by Cosmic Sounds.

Gunther Berghof
2 months ago
this musical experience is really a masochistic affair , it pains me to listen to these sound vibrations yet one wonders what kind of crap will come next

De natura sonorum, RCM, London

12 people in the audience! What a cultured city London is.

I would have made it 13 but that whole distance thing.

Could have done with you there, Ned. Funniest part was the girl in ticket office asking me where I wanted to sit, "The red dots are empty seats".

A young RCM composer was performing a premiere of one of his own pieces - very good it was too!

Nice!

Sounds rough. The room was packed when I saw him at Rien a voir in Montreal years ago. How was the experience?

Well, the music is great, so... and I have been in smaller audiences, I used to go to improv gigs after all.

Oh, yeah, it's something we accept as part of the deal. I just meant: how was the music in that space, the diffusion (if that's what it was), the setup and acoustics, etc? But you said it was great.

Setup and acoustics were great, the electronics guy there is excellent - he's called Michael Oliva, he's also a composer.

He really pushed the volume right up at the end of the Parmegiani piece, which was much appreciated, by all 12 of us.

But you've got to wonder how much longer these sorts of concerts can continue when no fucker comes to them.

Gotta take it underground.

I was going to go to this! But didn't, in the end, otherwise the post would have read:

13 people in the audience! What a cultured city London is.

Modernist classical tends to do better in London if at the South Bank or Barbican and expensively advertised, otherwise it's in the wilderness.

this is a cool progressive electronic soundtrack that doesn't sound like any other Parmegiani I've heard

https://transversales.bandcamp.com/album/rock

Talking of pop/ rock songs turning up in modern classical pieces, listening to Stockhausen's "Kurzwellen" (I think the version from Cologne 1969) I'd forgotten that Scott Walker, some years from his rebirth as an "avant-gardist", shows up singing "Joanna" at one point.

― tom d: he did what he had to do now he is dead (Tom D.), Thursday, 5 August 2010 10:16 (eleven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

No dedicated thread for this phenomenon but I just noticed T Rex's "Get It On" popping up about 19 minutes into the first track on this Keith Rowe album I'm listening to.

There’s an AMM record where “Love Me Do” comes in quite clearly. I seem to remember Rowe being asked about it, and he said something like, “Nobody who could sue us for that has noticed.”