Bernard Parmegiani, born in 1927, was trained as a musician and sound technician. He joined the GRM in 1960, his particular field of inquiry being the techniques of studio composition. He is the author of many works for magnetic tape and for instruments and tape, and also of music for cinema and television.

PONOMATOPEES II - inspired by the electro-acoustic treatment of the voice and also by some of the vocal ravings of pop singers, these chomatopoeic fantasises should be heard, according to the composers, as follows:
1. Sit in the manner of bad European yogis
2. Pretend to concentrate, thinking of nothing but what is said
3. Catch the meaning… repeat.. turn around.
4. Then 'ponomatopise' …. You will free yourself from the enjoyment of the verb!

GENERIQUE - There is a particular art employed in both radio and television, which consists of establishing in the sounds of a "generique" (a kind of sound trailer), the character of the ensuing programme. Bernard Parmegiani has composed many generiques, both for regular items and as preludes to plays.

Pierre Henry, born in 1927, studied composition with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen. He was the first composer to become associated with the experiments in musique concrete of Pierre Schaeffer, with whom he has collaborated on several works, notably the "Symphonie pour un home seul". In 1960 Pierre Henry founded an independent studio, the studio Apsome, where he has realised many works, the best-known being "Le Voyage" (1962), "Variations pour une porte et un soupir" (1963) and "Messe pour le temps present".

BIDULE EN UT (1950) which might well be translated as "Thingamy in C" is the first combined work of Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer. A kind of complex improvised scale on a prepared piano gives rise - by double transposition into low and high pitch - to a 3 part fugue. As the transposition affects both duration and material, it is less a matter of recognizing a theme at different tempi, than of appreciation the manner in which the three streams blend together in a brilliant and concise ensemble movement.

DAHOVI II dates from 1961. Sounds akin to "breaths" (which translates the Serbo-Croatian word dahovi) furnish the deliberately restricted basic material of this composition. The purpose in face is less to bring out individual sound effects than to emphasize the play of volumes and densities which they form among themselves and which are barely underscored by a few designs of line and shading.

Pierre Schaeffer was born in 1910, His varied activities as engineer, musician and writer led him t become the pioneer of a multilateral form of research into communication, of which the principle stages have been the founding of the Studio d'essais de la Radio Francaise (1942) and subsequently of the Service de la Recherche de l'ORTF. He is the author of radiophonic works of films and experimental records and various writings, particularly on music. His compositions have marked the birth of electro-acoustic music and its developments .

ETUDE AUX ALLURES forms part of a series of exploration into musical characteristics of the world of sound which are outside the ideas of traditional music. The allure of a sound is its way of sustaining itself, by a generalised vibration, which acts on the pitch and intensity as well as on the colour. L'etude sets up some kinds of rhymes between various sounds with more or less tights allures.

Francois Bayle was born in 1932. He is self-taught, but with long experience in experimental music; he is less devoted to the evolution of pure musical aesthetics than to the discovery of new musical methods engendered by contemporary techniques. His career as a composer is therefore closely linked to the fundamental and applied researches of the GRM, in which he has been the animator since 1966. His works include compositions for magnetic tape, and film-music.

SOLITIOUDE (1969) has been commented on thus by the composer: "Irreverent movement in spite of a series of light genuflexions (to Duke Ellington… Boris Vian… the Soft Machine). David Allen (of Soft Machine, JS) provided me with fine guitar sounds. The tape-recorders contributed some incidents. But the events of May (probably the riots of May 1969 in Paris, JS) were most generous offering me an abundance of teeming life, the charm-shock of their sirens. The splashes of the crowd, the applause of the sea this -pop-nature in auditory hallucination - forms one of the episodes of an 'Aventure du Cri' in which I am engaged at the moment."