The aesthetics of animated sound: François Bayle, Bernard Parmegiani and the Service de la recherche de l’ORTF

Abstract

Founded by Pierre Schaeffer in 1960, the Service de la recherche at Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française sought to incubate technical and aesthetic research in television and radio, supporting the development of novel animation techniques, pedagogical films for television and experimental short films. As such, the Service served as a fertile meeting point for composers and filmmakers, playing a significant role in the early careers of a number of well-known French composers of electroacoustic music. The early work of both François Bayle and Bernard Parmegiani principally consisted of music and sound for the moving image – and in particular for experimental animated shorts by filmmakers including Robert Lapoujade and Piotr Kamler – created with the support of the Service de la recherche. In attending to the particular configurations of sound and image worked out in these collaborations, the idea of ‘animation’ emerges as a recurring concern in the electroacoustic music of the period, underwriting both a general approach to recorded sound and, I argue, particular formal and technical developments in the aesthetics of French electroacoustic music in the 1960s and beyond.