To Pierre Henry

Pierre Henry (December 9, 1927- July 5, 2017)

©Frank Perry/AFP

“What is time during a work on magnetic tape? It is an imposed rhythmicity by rigid durations. By this I mean, through natural and living textures, sounds interspersed, assembled according to our will, by an artificial tempo. Well, this rhythm, I will not say that one writes it: one thinks it. And to play it, one performs emotional, jerky, linear, strong, light gestures: the same gestures that Béjart invented for dance.”

Pierre Henry

Excerpt from “Journal de mes sons”. Editions Actes Sud, 2004