In May 2018, during a symposium held at IRCAM in homage to Jean-Claude Risset (1938–2016), which brought together many pioneers in computer music and music acoustics, Nicolas Donin, Vincent Tiffon, and I developed the idea of an oral history project centered on IRCAM. Our Italian colleague Laura Zattra immediately joined the initiative.
It was soon decided to broaden the scope of the investigation to include other French institutions, with the aim of studying the development in France of a network of interdisciplinary research focused on musical sound.
The year 1958 marked a pivotal moment in the establishment of this network. Pierre Schaeffer's Groupe de recherche de musique concrète (GRMC) was transformed into the Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM), and François Canac organized the first congress on musical acoustics in Marseille under the auspices of the CNRS. This period marked the beginning of what has come to be known as the "Thirty Glorious Years of Music Research," characterized by the creation of approximately twenty research institutions up to the late 1980s, including IRCAM.
The RAMHO project involves more than a dozen researchers from various disciplines, including musicology, computer science, acoustics, psychoacoustics, experimental psychology, and history. Between 2019 and 2024, the project compiled around fifty accounts, amounting to approximately two hundred hours of audio recordings. Among the interviewees were several long-time collaborators of Pierre Boulez, who played a key role in the design of IRCAM during the 1970s. IRCAM’s main underground building officially opened in 1977.
As part of the celebrations marking the Boulez centenary, we are publishing a number of excerpts from the interviews conducted with those who, alongside Pierre Boulez, helped build IRCAM. We extend our heartfelt thanks to them for generously sharing their memories with us.
Par François-Xavier Féron, chercheur de l'équipe Analyse des pratiques musicales du laboratoire STMS (Ircam, Sorbonne université, CNRS, ministère de la Culture)
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