Pierre Henry Le Microphone Bien Tempere (Avant Garde Project 42)

The Avant Garde Project is a series of 20th-century classical-experimental-electroacoustic torrents digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. This is wild stuff, so check it out if you've never heard this sort of music before. The analog rig used to extract the sound from the grooves is near state-of-the-art, producing almost none of the tracking distortion or surface noise normally associated with LPs.
AGP1-39 are now available for direct download in the archive at www.avantgardeproject.org
AGP40-41 are available at http://thepiratebay.org/user/loudav
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AGP42 is the first of two installments of early out-of-print works by Pierre Henry. Le Microphone Bien Tempere (1950-52) was Pierre Henry's first solo work (Symphonie Pour un Homme Seul having been written in collaboration with his mentor Pierre Schaeffer), and one of the earliest pieces of electroacoustic music. The microphone of the title was used to record various sounds produced by a prepared piano. The work comprises sixteen movements, almost all of which were realized using flexible discs rather than magnetic tape, as the latter recording technology was just coming into general use at that time. The sound of these works is primitive, with an earthy sound that has little power at the frequency extremes. Even so, it is remarkable how Henry reconceived the ideas of rhythm, timbre, and musical structure in taking advantage of this new compositional medium.
The torrent includes a text file containing the liner notes from the LP from which these works were transcribed. Since they are in French, they are an unedited output of my OCR software.
Equipment used for A/D conversion: Lyra Helikon phono cartridge, Linn LP12/Lingo turntable, Linn Ittok tonearm, Audioquest LeoPard tonearm cable, PS Audio PS2 preamplifier, Kimber PBJ interconnect, M-Audio Audiophile USB A/D converter.
01 - Pierre Henry, Le Microphone Bien Tempere, Side A [24:48]
02 - Pierre Henry, Le Microphone Bien Tempere, Side B [23:40]
NOTE: To the best of my knowledge, these recordings are currently out of print. If you know otherwise, please let me know ASAP, as I do not wish any artists to be deprived of the royalties that they so richly deserve.