Les Femmes de GRM

The new concert series »Les Femmes de GRM« is set to begin on the occasion of the 70^th birthday of Françoise Barrière. The series focuses on female composers who, though connected with the Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM), were awarded little acceptance or attention. The first concert of the series is dedicated to compositions by Françoise Barrière and Beatriz Ferreyra. The impetus behind the concert series was the WDR3 broadcast of the same name designed by Reinhold Friedl.
 

Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM)

Founded by Pierre Schaffer as institute for the research of electroacoustic music in 1958, the GRM represents one among several theoretical and at the same time experimental groups of works that comprised part of Schaeffer’s »Service de la Recherche« at the French radio. The goal was to develop a platform which served research work in the field of audio-visual communication, the music as well as other audible or medial phenomena. Several well-known »music concrète« composers are connected with the group.
 
When considering the GRM one of the striking features is the predominance of male artists in the public’s perception of the institution, in spite of the fact that female artists played a decisive role in the development of electroacoustic music around Schaeffer. Various generations of women in the GRM have failed repeatedly due to the same hurdles: independent compositional work proved difficult since, for women, access to the necessary studio equipment and devices was often made difficult or even denied them. Moreover, even the most talented female composers were frequently obliged to wait, for the most part in vain, for their works to be performed, in spite of the fact that the artists in question worked with the most innovative technologies, and contributed to the further development of Schaeffer’s method.
 

Francoise Barrière

Following classic piano studies at the Conservatoire de Versailles, Francoise Barrière took courses in harmony and counterpoint at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique and, for a short while, joined GRM. Like many other composers, she turned her back on the group fairly soon, following which she founded the Institute for Electroacoustic Music in Bourges (IMEB) together with Christian Clozier in 1970. She later became co-founder of Festivals Synthèse, the first competition for electroacoustic music and electronic art, was also publisher of the journal Faire as well as manager of the publishers Mnémosyne Musique Media, which is closely connected to IMEB. As a composer, Barrière not only created purely electroacoustic pieces, but also worked regularly with links to instrumental music.

Beatriz Ferreyra

The Argentinian composer Beatriz Ferreyra (*1937) already joined GRM in the early 1960s. As Schaeffer’s assistant she realized »solfège de l’objet sonore« together with Simone Rist, the audio school to Schaeffer’s theoretical main work »traité des objets musicaux« released on three LP’s. Ferreyra transferred to the Institute for Electroacoustic Music in Bourges, in 1975. She created the experimental concert series »Les rendez-vous de la Musique concrète« am Centre d’études et de Recherche Pierre Schaeffer between 1998 and 1999 in which the combinatorics of sounds play a special role in her own works. Ferreyra made appearances at diverse international festivals, conferences and seminars in the field of electroacoustic music, and, as an independent composer, composed pieces for public events, for film but also for dance performances.
 

Program

Sound director: Françoise Barrière