Born 1938. Works three years with Max Mathews at Bell Laboratories to develop the musical resources of computer sound synthesis: imitation of real timbres (brass synthesis, 1965; pitch paradoxes, synthesis of new timbres and sonic development processes, 1967-1969). Writes many musical works, most of which resort to computer synthesis in conjonction with instruments or human voice. Publishes a catalog of computer synthesized sounds (1969).

Sets up computer sound systems at Orsay (1970-1971), at the University of Marseille-Luminy (1974), and at IRCAM, where Pierre Boulez asks him to head the Computer Department (1975-1979). As a composer in residence at the Media Labratory, MIT (1987-1989), implements the first real-time interaction between performer and computer with acoustic piano sounds.

Presently "Directeur de recherche" emeritus, CNRS, works on computer music in Marseille. Among other distinctions, Golden NICA, Ars Electronica, 1987; Grand Prix National de la Musique, 1990; Gold medal, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1999.

Elementa (1998) - 22:00 for 4 channel tape

Commissionned by the French Ministry of Culture for the fiftieth anniversary of musique concrète and realized at INA-GRM, Paris (1998), Elementa is deliberately electroacoustic.

Popular electronic music resorts to sampling and mixing : it thus catches up with processes initiated by musique concrète half a century earlier. I am neither connoisseur nor fond of techno, but in this work I have here and there picked up fragments of my own compositions, but mostly sound samples taken from "the very bone of nature" - simple sounds or soundscapes, or more often spectra, atmospheres, impulses, elaborated and inlaid in the musical stuff, or weaved into figures, phrases, developments and sections : a compositional work, but considerate towards the autonomy of organic objects and their dynamics of flux, duration and energy.

The piece evokes the four elements of Empedocle - which corresponds to the four states of matter : solid, liquid, gazeous, ionized (plasma). The sound material consists mostly of recordings of sound phenomena from the four elements. The origin of the sound sources is not hidden: the composition relies upon their connotations and their symbolic implications. The piece also includes sounds synthesized with the Music V program and the Synclavier digital synthesizer, which mimick gaits specific to the four states of matter : "solid" sound objects, fluid textures, eolian and noisy puffs, blows and breaths, "ionized" timbres, shrill, agile and dissociated. From the fire, the vocalizations fo Irène Jarsky and Maria Tegzes emerge as Pythia's incantations. The sounds have been processed and edited in INA-GRM studios, using the Pro Tools et GRM Tools software. The original version is 4-track.

The order of the elements is as follows:

- Aqua.. Our primal liquid medium - evoked by the water and also by the fluidity of melted materials : inharmonic textures that will be solidified into bell-like tones in the fourth section. Water drips, flows, laps, breaks - brook, torrent, river, cataract, all going down to the sea.

- Focus.
Fire is ambivalent: warm and terrifying, crackling, quick, blazing, consuming and destructive. Atomized sounds, always moving.The wind sets fire in bushes. The crackling excites resonant filters at its own rhtyhm. The fire grows and seems to flood the flaming vocalizations. At the end, the fire rotates in the direction of the stars - celestial fire balls.

- Aer. The slaps of the flute are echoed by eolian puffs in reeds, overblowing into pipes, the air which both sustains and vibrates, set into motion by insect wings or nozzles. At the end, a round of the seven winds.

- Terra evokes our vital sphere, with the mineral, vegetal and animal order. The solid state of matter is illustrated through its different forms of vibration: rolling, friction, percussion, creaking, plucking, explosion ... After a long expectancy and a passacaglia of pebbles, everything is rocked: in an avalanche, even earth and stones flow.

I thank François Bayle, Daniel Teruggi and François Donato.
Jean-Claude Risset.

Total duration 22 minutes