Or perhaps his influence?
As mentioned previously, I am a big Doctor Who fan. Hand-in-hand with that love of Doctor Who came the love of the music\effects that accompanied the programme through its 26 year “Classic” programme run. Therefore, I am also a fan of what was The BBC Radiophonic Workshop and its pioneering work in the field of electronic music. A natural progression from that is being a fan of other electronic music and other artists.
Obviously, not all electronic music – in the sense that someone who enjoys guitar music (for example) will not like all guitar music played by anyone – I must admit to liking more than a bit of electronic music, as produced by specific artists.
The BBC Radiophonic Workshop features heavily in my preferred favourite electronic music list, however there is one individual that is at the very top of my favourite musicians. The French composer and musician Jean-Michel Jarre has featured – and continues to feature – at the top of that list for many, many years…
But what has Pierre Schaeffer got to do with it? …
Musique Concrète
If you’re familiar with The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, it’s history and it’s composers (especially in the early days), then you’ll be familiar with the concept of musique concrète.
If you aren’t (and I wouldn’t blame you) here’s a brief description of what musique concrète is:
- Record a sound onto tape. Any sound, but it must be made (banging a lampshade, the sound of the wind, a door slamming etc).
- Take that recording and manipulate it to fit in with a composition (reverse it, slow it down, chop it up etc).
And that – put very, very simply – is musique concrète – taking a real sound and manipulating it electronically to produce different tones, pitches and lengths to include as part of a musical composition. In other words, sampling.
Pierre Schaeffer (the main post picture is he) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician. He was most widely and currently recognised for his accomplishments in electronic and experimental music, at the core of which stands his role as the chief developer of a unique and early form of avant-garde music known as musique concrète.
The influence (and genius) of Pierre Schaeffer
In 1948, Pierre Schaeffer met the percussionist-composer Pierre Henry, with whom he collaborated on many different musical compositions. In 1951, he founded the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC) in the French Radio Institution. This gave him a new studio, which included a tape recorder. This was a significant development for Schaeffer, who previously had to work with phonographs and turntables to produce music. Schaeffer is generally acknowledged as being the first composer to make music using magnetic tape.
Schaeffer left the GRMC in 1953 and reformed the group in 1958 as the Groupe de Recherche Musicales (at first without “s”, then with “s”), where he briefly mentored students.
It was around this period that both Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram managed to convince the BBC powers-that-be to create what would come to be called The BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Using the techniques and methods perfected by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry at the Groupe de Recherche Musicales (GRM), the BBC Radiophonic Workshop went on to not only utilise their musique concrète methods, but to develop them and use them in BBC programmes up until around the early 1970’s, when the introduction of the synthesiser made those methods and techniques sadly redundant.
But in 1969, at the GRM and under the tutelage of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, came a young French musician called Jean-Michel Jarre …
Jean-Michel Jarre…. and me
This is not a post about Jean-Michel Jarre, his history or his many accomplishments (you can look him up on Wikipedia for that). No. It’s a post about what effect his music had on me at aged 16 … and thereon until the present day.
One of his first albums Oxygène – the album released in 1976 (and the one that he became globally recognised for), was the first piece of music that I ever bought myself.
I’ve touched on this before, in this post: Compact Cassettes (Tapes). 1977 was the year that I started work – and started my apprenticeship at a College about 10 miles from where I lived. I used to periodically travel to and from College on a bus, which terminated at a small Bus Station. In this small Bus Station were a couple of shops, including a branch of the popular newsagent and stationers WHSmith. Only a small shop, it sold the usual newspapers, books and things, but it also had a music section, in which it carried a selection of “MC”‘s, or Music Cassettes. Keep in mind that this was the late 70’s, the Sony Walkman didn’t yet exist and you had to go and buy a “proper” cassette tape player to play your music on. Waiting for the bus to take me home, I used to have a browse through the albums to see if any appealed to 16 year old me.
At that time, most of my college friends were into heavy metal, or heavy rock (including me, to an extent) but although I liked some of the heavy metal stuff, I always had (and still have) quite an eclectic taste in music, so I didn’t necessarily focus entirely on the rock section. Album browsing time was when I had time to kill, waiting for the bus to take me home.
During one of those “browsing” times waiting for that bus – around September 1977 – it must have been pure serendipity that I happened to glance over in a particular direction and see the cassette for Oxygène sat in the rack, right in front of me. There must have been a vague notion of recognition of the name Oxygène – I listened to the radio a reasonable amount in those days (we all did at the time) – especially the Top 40 that was broadcast on a Sunday evening – so I think I may have remembered Oxygène Part IV that had been released as a single (and had climbed to No.4 in the UK charts) in 1977. In fact, I remembered the single being played on Top of the Pops in September 1977.
And so, dear reader, I bought it
Remember that this is just a tad over 45 years ago at time of writing and so my memory of what I had to play it on is somewhat vague (to say the least!). I know that I started recording the Top 40 singles charts in 1976 (onto blank cassettes – as we all did), so therefore I must have had the ability to record. I think I had a Philips radio (FM, of course) with a WHSmith own-brand tape recorder, lashed together with some phono leads (I can’t recall if it was stereo or not, however). I do remember that I had a “boom-box” at a later date (possibly 1980), but definitely not at that time. So, I would have more than likely listened to my nice new Oxygène album through headphones, but can’t remember whether it was stereo or not!
What I do remember – and I remember this vividly – I remember listening to that album and being absolutely blown away!
And so it was at that point in time that my (never-ending) love affair with the music of Jean-Michel Jarre began. That first album that I bought led to his second album Équinoxe, released in December 1978. But this time, I was ready for it!
In 1978, there was no internet, no smartphones, no multi-channel television. The only way that you could get any information in those days was by reading newspapers or magazines, Ceefax (the TV teletext services), radio, or word of mouth. I can’t quite recall how I knew that he would release his second album in December 1978 (I used to read the New Musical Express in those days, so I probably saw it in there), but I must have done, as I clearly recall hanging around that branch of WHSmith an awful lot, scouring the album racks for the new JMJ album.
I eventually got hold of the album, went home on the bus (the longest 30 minutes in history!) and listened to it.
Earache
I don’t think I’ve ever listened to two cassettes so much for so long! Équinoxe was every bit as good (if not better) than Oxygène, providing just the right balance of electronica and trance (as it’s called now) than other electronic bands such as Kraftwerk did. But that music was much more than just a soundtrack for me.
Those times – from 1978 to 1983 in particular (having bought the third album Magnetic Fields as well) – were very good times for me; embarking on an apprenticeship for a job that (it turned out) I enjoyed doing (and was reasonably good at!), those long summers (well, they seemed like it!) when you were in your teens, the discovery of females, motorbikes … and many, many more good times. (I’m pretty sure there were bad times too, but one tends to forget those!) My (engineering) apprenticeship and subsequent on-the-job maintenance training at a large factory where I lived were some of the better times in my life, where I was learning a hell of lot of stuff from really good people – mechanical engineering, plumbing, electrical engineering and my “new” hobby of electronics.
By the late 1970’s, The BBC Radiophonic Workshop had now bought analogue synthesisers to produce their music and sound effects and of course, I now owned three whole Jean-Michel Jarre albums – music produced on the same type of synthesiser used by the men and women at The Workshop. However, Radiophonic Workshop material was very hard to come by (no Amazon and no internet, remember?). Jean-Michel Jarre, however, was right there in the shops – and I was playing those albums almost constantly during those years.
And so it went on. I bought JMJ albums pretty much as they were released, no matter where I was in life. From Zoolook and Rendezvous (the last albums bought on MC – music cassette) to Revolutions (the first album bought on that new-fangled CD format), to En Attendant Cousteau, Chronologie and Métamorphoses in 2000. Those were the albums that I (physically) bought and listened to, constantly.
As mentioned, I played my JMJ almost constantly. Inevitably, as was the wont of MC’s in those days, the tape used to break. So, what we used to do was to splice them back together using sellotape, unconsciously echoing the musique concrète techniques started by Pierre Schaeffer in the 1950’s!
Then one day, the internet arrived!! And with it, the ability to buy and download various music formats and to view videos!
Electronic music arrives… Electronically!
The 2000’s brought with it domestic broadband – which opened up my access to the albums that I’d missed (Oxygène 7-13 and the superb Aero for example) and so not only was I able to buy the missing albums, I could also watch videos of JMJ concerts and appearances that I’d never had access to before. I’d seen two concerts that had been broadcast on UK TV (the Houston concert and the Destination Docklands concert in London) – but I’d only seen them once (as they weren’t recorded on video at the time).
But now, not only could I experience the sounds that I’d missed, but I could also view and experience the visual spectacle that I’d missed too! I’d read articles about the spectacular light and laser shows, I knew about the laser harp (yes, I still want one!) and I knew about the older synths that were still a part of the music, but to actually see them “in action” is still a wonderful thing!
Oh, but I love those synths! All of those old synths, the EMS, the Synthi 100, the sequencers, the Korg Minipops drum machines, the Eminent and, of course the Fairlight CMI digital sampler synth. Although I can’t play a note I still love these instruments for their sound and their complexity and would own one in an instant, given the opportunity. Whereas the quality of video has got better and better over the years, sound quality has always been pretty good (Rendezvous was my first cassette made with the higher quality chromium dioxide tape), so although I pretty much knew what to expect sound-wise, experiencing and seeing the playing of those synths, the manipulations of the keyboards, was both astounding and revelatory.
Then in 2007, everything went quiet in the Jean-Michel Jarre world!
Electronica 1 Arrives… Electronically and Physically!
2007 was the year I moved house. Therefore 2007 (and a few years on) I’ve been a little bit busy! Settling in, decorating, fixing and generally not really noticing the lack of new JMJ material. Up until a couple of years ago, when the thought did occur to me that I hadn’t bought any new JMJ albums for a while. A bit of internet later and I am furnished with Oxygène: New Master Recording and both Rarities albums. But what of Jean-Michel? Had he retired? Would he produce any new material?
All was revealed in August 2015, when a Google Alert that I’d fortuitously set up prompted me to look at a press release formally announcing the Electronica project. A set of two albums, for release in Oct 2015 and the Spring of 2016, with brand new tracks from JMJ, collaborating with other artists (such as Pete Townshend, Fuck Buttons, Laurie Anderson and Little Boots). Did it sound interesting? Hell yes!!
And did I buy it? Well, of course (and the collector’s box set too). Worth it? Every single penny, yes!!
In 1978, when I bought that very first album Oxygène, I bought a music cassette with a card inlay (I can’t remember exactly how much it was, but it would have been around £4). Written on the inlay was a track list, a list of musicians and instruments – and that was it. When I bought the latest album Electronica 1 on October 16th 2015, I got a digital download (mp3), a CD (in the post, a day later). There were Twitter announcements, Facebook page posts (plus other social media) and there is a whole section of YouTube with videos of JMJ himself describing the tracks together with the artists, there are interviews with JMJ and so on and so forth. I bought the limited edition box-set too – comprising a high quality digital copy of the album, a CD, two heavyweight vinyl records and an in depth description of the instruments. We get so much more in this digital age and it’s sobering to think how far that is away from that first purchase nigh on 45 years ago.
Future Nostalgia
But take all the advertising, the social media, the fancy box-set, the vast amount of video coverage and even the album itself. Do you know what the best bit is out of all of that? …
I’ll tell you:
It’s this video.
This video is almost 23 minutes of Jean-Michel Jarre speaking and demonstrating the construction of one track on the Electronica 1 album. The track (Track 3) is called Close Your Eyes and was a collaboration with the contemporary French band Air. The reason I love this video (and the track) so much is because of JMJ’s description of all of the older synths, instruments and techniques that were used to construct the track. Spanning 50 years of electronic music – the track starts with oscillators and tape loops – and finishes with an iPad app. Along the way, JMJ introduces us to the the sound made on his EMS, which he calls “Arlette” (he calls the sound Arlette, not the instrument). The track itself is one of the best JMJ tracks in recents years, evoking memories of that very first album – Oxygène and was the thing that gave me the idea for this very post.
Magnificent.
So is it all Pierre Schaeffer’s Fault?
Yes, I think so. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have The BBC Radiophonic Workshop – which of course means the Doctor Who theme could have gone in a completely different direction! And of course we wouldn’t have had the Jean-Michel Jarre that we have today, apprenticed in those early techniques under Pierre Schaeffer at the GRM in France.
So yes – thankfully – it’s all Pierre Schaeffer’s fault. Something for which we are all in his debt.
Pierre Schaeffer (1910 – 1995)
Footnote
Pierre Schaeffer was of course at the forefront of developing musique concrète, but he was not alone. As mentioned above, collaboration with Pierre Henry (1927 – 2017) influenced the young Jean-Michel Jarre and made him what he is today. So much was Pierre Henry’s influence that his recent album Oxymore (2022) uses sounds created by Pierre Henry in its compositions, as a tribute to Henry and French way of approaching electronic music, including of course, musique concrète.
I chose some of his sounds precisely from one track to another. ‘Oxymore’ is also a tribute to the French way of approaching modern music, electroacoustic music, and my early studies at the GRM where Pierre definitely influenced the future of electronic music worldwide, along with Pierre Schaeffer.
Jean-Michel Jarre, 2022
Let’s also not forget the British pioneers of early electronic music. Delia Derbyshire (1937 – 2001), Dick Mills, Brian Hodgson and The BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Without those people, we wouldn’t have had that Doctor Who theme for a start!
What a horrible thought.