I visited her home in Paris with Baptiste Bacot on July 25, 2022. The interview lasted just over two and a half hours. We met again in September 2023 to edit and finalise this fascinating account of the creation of IRCAM. We kept in touch afterwards, keeping her informed of the progress of the RAMHO project and more particularly of my research into the history of the IRCAM. It was with deep sadness that I learned of her death on December 3, 2024. With these few unpublished extracts from our interview, I would like to pay my last respects to her and express my sincere condolences to her family and friends.

Brigitte Marger
When I arrived in London [in 1967], it was an exciting time: there was new music, new fashions, emancipation in terms of dress, sex, social life... My years in London were definitely what we called ‘Swinging London’.

François-Xavier Féron

How many years did you stay there?

Brigitte Marger

I stayed for six years and that's when I met Pierre Boulez [...].

François-Xavier Féron
At that time, did you already have a foothold in the sphere of ‘savant’ contemporary music?

Brigitte Marger

I liked avant-garde things, I always have. I really wanted to invite Pierre Boulez because, at the time, he had the image of a rebel. He'd left and slammed the door! He was living in Baden-Baden but had been hired by the BBC at the time.

François-Xavier Féron
When did you first hear about Boulez?

Brigitte Marger

I'd been to concerts at the Domaine musical. I wasn't a musician, but I was a music lover. He was one of the people I really wanted to meet and it was really extraordinarily easy. I got his phone number, called him up and said, "I really admire you. Could we have lunch?" He replied: "Yes, why not."

François-Xavier Féron
Do you remember at what stage of your tenure you met him in London?

Brigitte Marger

Very early on! I think it must have been as early as 1967. We became friends and I used to follow the concerts he gave with the BBC orchestra. There were premieres, notably Éclat / Multiples [premiered in London on October 21, 1970]. We never lost touch from then on [laughs]. Then the moment came when I said to myself that I had to go back to Paris. I think I had one or two offers, but one day Pierre Boulez gave me a very long description of his plans for IRCAM, which fascinated me [...].

François-Xavier Féron
When he gave you this long talk about IRCAM, was he trying to poach you?

Brigitte Marger

No, not at all, but when I asked him, he immediately said yes. He said, "Yes, that's very good because there will certainly be publications." And then I thought ‘oh dear’, because at that time he didn't think there would be many events and concerts.

At the start, the IRCAM was only supposed to be a research institute [...] He really insisted on that, saying, "You know, Brigitte, there will be publications and there will be relations with the outside world, but we're not here to give concerts."

François-Xavier Féron
That's surprising.

Brigitte Marger

I think you can see that he was a man of... I would say of ‘positive change’ [laughs].

François-Xavier Féron
That's a nice expression!

Brigitte Marger

I don't know if it's tactical or strategic - I've never really understood the difference - but when he saw that a course of action didn't suit his purpose, he changed. That was one of the first reversals that happened. When I offered my services, I thought it was going to be austere and very different from what I was doing in London. When I arrived, I found Paris very boring, but I very quickly realised that the Centre Pompidou was an exciting project, otherwise life in Paris was dead compared with London in the 1970s.

~

Brigitte Marger
Pierre [Boulez] was hardly ever there because he had taken over the direction of the New York orchestra and had kept London. It was hellish! We had no Zoom, no WhatsApp... I remember, for example, picking him up by car at the airport so that I could talk to him between the airport and Paris to prepare the press conference in 1974. And then, fortunately, there was his very good secretary called Astrid Schirmer; she managed to get the papers he sent back to her corrected.

François-Xavier Féron
She followed him everywhere?

Brigitte Marger

Astrid Schirmer became his assistant in London. I think he recruited her when he arrived at the BBC. In London, Pierre had an impresario called [Howard] Hartog whom he liked very much. After his death [in 1990], I don't think he took on any more agents and it was Astrid who took care of all the engagements, contracts and discussions with Bayreuth, New York... She played a very important role! You should know that Pierre Boulez never said no: he was a ‘yes to everything’ man and it was Astrid who had to explain afterwards, "Yes, he did say yes, but perhaps we should postpone it for a year because...".

~

Brigitte Marger
What's quite striking in retrospect is that the IRCAM's initial approach was highly prescriptive, "We'll have to do this, there'll be this; to link up the departments we'll do this." In reality, all this was disrupted and called into question by a number of events, both by the state of the art - in particular by heavy-duty computing, which was very, very disappointing at the time - and by politics. At some point, we had to be able to explain why we were doing all this... And so, in the end, these fine plans, which were the subject of several brochures, were turned completely reworked.

François-Xavier Féron
What brochures are you talking about?

Brigitte Marger

I think the first brochure was distributed at the 1974 press conference and then I produced at least two more. There was a bit of a drama because it was all codified by the very well-known Swiss graphic designer for the Centre Pompidou [Jean Widmer]. The colour attributed to IRCAM was purple. When I showed it to Pierre Boulez, he got very, very angry!

François-Xavier Féron
Because of the colour?

Brigitte Marger

Because of the colour! "Brigitte, that's out of the question, it reminds me of church vestments. It's not possible, I don't want ecclesiastical colours! Tell them it's absolutely out of the question." Finally, we went from purple to violet...

Du violet au pourpre: deux tirages d’une brochure de présentation de l’Ircam parue en 1976 © François-Xavier Féron

~

Brigitte Marger

Pierre had had a commission for the Donaueschingen Festival for a long time. I read in an interview with Andrew [Gerzso] that he really pushed Pierre to get down to work. Composing a new work had become a real challenge. Work accelerated in the summer of 1981. I remember seeing him arrive in the morning and walk across the mezzanine at IRCAM with his big bag.

François-Xavier Féron
So that was shortly before the first version [of Répons on October 18, 1981].

Brigitte Marger

That's it. I remember very well going down to the Espace de projection for the first rehearsal. When I heard the arpeggios, I said to myself, "OK, that's it, we've won!" like the pole vaulter who has cleared the bar [laughs]. In the end, I don't think it was the reorganisation of IRCAM that made this leap forward possible. I think there was this sort of miracle that allowed us to use a technique that wasn't destined to be mature at the time - you know this better than I do, but it was only later that we had the necessary technologies. There was this kind of miracle with the 4A and then the 4X, thanks to the presence of [Giuseppe] Di Giugno and the work with Andrew Gerzso. Répons was several years ahead of the technical advances - well, that's my interpretation. It allowed us to say, "Yes, it's possible. This is what we had to do and we were right to do it!" In a way, IRCAM's mistake was to have been created too early in relation to the state of the art.

By François-Xavier Féron, CNRS researcher in the Analysis of Musical Practices team in the STMS laboratory (IRCAM, Sorbonne University, CNRS, Ministry of Culture)

Quote: Brigitte Marger - Interview with François-Xavier Féron and Baptiste Bacot, July 25, 2022, RAMHO project (Recherche et acoustique musicales en France : une histoire orale), STMS - IRCAM, unpublished.