Pierre Henry in 1967 © Jean-Régis Roustan / Roger Viollet
Since his earliest youth, from his parents’ houses in Quincy-sous-Sénart to his mother's house in La Mure in the Isère region, via the Parisian flat on rue de Saint-Pétersbourg, Pierre Henry has always been passionate about creating unique sound instruments.
His experimentation continued in 1949, when he joined the "Studio d'Essai" founded by Pierre Schaeffer at the RTF (French radio and television broadcasting). This was the time of the acetate disc, phonogene, tape recorder, spatialisation bay and the magnetic handle, which gave birth to ‘musique concrète’.
Then, in 1958, he abruptly withdrew to his parents’ makeshift studio called "zéro" on rue de Léningrad. Two years later, with the help of his friend Jean Baronnet, Pierre Henry created the first private electroacoustic music studio in Europe, on rue Cardinet in Paris, named "Apsome 1".
In 1964, Apsome moved to Boulevard Saint-Germain to house both the sound library and the editing and mixing studio. Thus becoming "Apsome 2".
His last move is in 1971, on rue de Toul, to a house in the 12th Paris arrondissement: "Apsome 3".
A decade later, then supported by the French Ministry of Culture, the studio evolves into "Son/Ré". Both his residence and workplace, this "Maison de sons" (House of Sounds) welcomed the public from 1996 onwards for shows of a new kind where the music travels from the console to a myriad of loudspeakers 'with effects of distance: the outside becomes the inside; a play of perspective, of placement in space and of diffusion' (*) - an ocean of sounds.
All the texts about the studios are by Franck Mallet.
(*) Le Son, la nuit', interviews with Franck Mallet, Paris, Éditions de la Philharmonie, 2017, p. 101.
See the chronology of works
Youth - Studio d’essai - Studio zéro - Apsome 1 - Apsome 2 - Apsome 3 - Son/Ré - Maison de sons