Lucien Ferrari (5 February 1929 – 22 August 2005) was a French composer and pioneer in musique concrète and electroacoustic music. He was a founding member of RTF's Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRMC), working alongside composers such as Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry.
Ferrari was born in Paris and was trained in music at a very young age. He studied the piano under Alfred Cortot, musical analysis under Olivier Messiaen, and composition under Arthur Honegger. His first works were freely atonal. A case of tuberculosis in his youth interrupted his career as a pianist. From then on, he mostly concentrated on musical composition. During this illness, he had the opportunity to become acquainted with the radio receiver, and with pioneers such as Schönberg, Berg, and Webern.
In 1954, Ferrari went to the United States to meet Edgard Varèse, whose Déserts he had heard on the radio, and had impressed him. This seems to have had a great effect on him, with the tape part in Déserts serving as inspiration for Ferrari to use magnetic tape in his own music. In 1958, he co-founded the Groupe de Recherches Musicales with Pierre Schaeffer and François-Bernard Mâche. He taught in institutions around the world, and worked for film, theatre and radio. By the early 1960s, Ferrari had begun work on his Hétérozygote, a piece for magnetic tape which uses ambient environmental sounds to suggest a dramatic narrative. The use of ambient recordings was to become a distinctive part of Ferrari's musical language.
Ferrari's Presque rien No. 1 'Le Lever du jour au bord de la mer (1970) is regarded as a classic of its kind. In it, Ferrari takes a day-long recording of environmental sounds at a Yugoslavian beach and, through editing, makes a piece that lasts just twenty-one minutes. It has been seen as an affirmation of John Cage's idea that music is always going on all around us, and if only we were to stop to listen to it, we would realise this. Ferrari continued to write purely instrumental music as well as his tape pieces. He also made a number of documentary films on contemporary composers in rehearsal, including Olivier Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Ferrari died in Arezzo, Italy, on 22 August 2005, at age 76.
Petite symphonie intuitive pour un paysage de printemps (1973–74)
Presque rien avec filles (1989)
BVHAAST 9009 Acousmatrix 3 – 1990
L'Escalier des aveugles (1991)
Xavier Legasa / Donatienne Michel-Dansac / Michel Musseau (song)
Ensemble Le Banquet, Dir. Olivier Dejours
Ina-grm ina c 2008/Musidisc 201302 – 1993
Presque rien No.1 – le lever du jour au bord de la mer (1967–70)
Presque rien No.2 – ainsi continue la nuit dans ma tête multiple (1977)
Presque rien avec filles (1989)
Fragments du journal intime (1980–82)
Comme une fantaisie dite des réminiscences (1989–91)
Christine Lagniel / Michel Maurer (Piano)