Luc Ferrari
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Luc Ferrari (February 5, 1929 – August 22, 2005) was a French composer, particularly noted for his tape music.
Biography
Luc Ferrari trained in music since a very young age and continued his composition and piano studies, until 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, with the pioneers such as Schönberg, Berg, Webern and others who strengthened him in his resolution to dissociate himself from the instruction of his first conservatoires.
He participated from 1954 to 1958 in the “Internationale Ferienkurse Darmstadt” - international vacation courses, where he had friendly relations with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio, Henry Pousseur, John Cage, Edgard Varèse. Later and afterwards Pierre Schaeffer still increased his urge to break the dams which force the musical traditions until then. Ferrari could only withdraw himself from dogmas.
Overwhelmed by «Déserts» from Edgard Varèse, he likewise discovered at the broadcast, he decided immediately in the year 1954 to visit him in New York. He dedicated this trip of several weeks on a freighter to the composition of piano pieces. His attraction to the musique concrète and his collaboration with Pierre Schaeffer from 1957 to 1966 led him to extend the notion of abstract music, to want to tear the membrane between the genres. The first portable tape recorders allowed him to collect outside of the studios the sound for his piece Hétérozygote, his first composition that he calls - with a smile, - « anecdotic music » - : «I want that the gesture of taking sounds outside allows my admission to the social. » There is no doubt that this composition from 1963-64 revealed his mind of freedom. From then on, his activities proved this as well as his deep attention to the society, his character open in all directions, marking his work within the most different areas such as films; writings; installations; symphonic works or for ensembles; works, in which he connected instruments with recorded sounds; spectacle-concert; multimedia; electroacoustic works; radio plays and also, starting from 1999, his work with experimental DJs and improvisation. Besides his inclination to the society, to the mixture of genres, his sense of humor, sensuality narration, perversion, to the anecdotic, Ferrari’s compositions transmit his revolt, his desire and his love for life.
With the films of 1965-66 for the Service de la Recherche of the O.R.T.F Les Grandes Répétitions - the important rehearsals - (INA), which he realizes with Gérard Patris, and which opened the spirit of the composers and pioneers such as Messiaen, Stockhausen, Varèse, Hermann Scherchen, Cecil Taylor, it happened for the first time that contemporary music was presented on French television. These are unique documents coveted by a large world of music.
