Pierre Henry / Michel Colombier
Messe Pour le Temps Présent

Essential History of Electronic Music

II. Henry and the Rock Électronique

In the ferment of the '60s, electronics is the prerogative of a cultured elite of experimenters. No popular origins in synthesized music: neither the earthy origins of blues, nor the folkloristic beginnings of rock; electronic music is born in the niches of avant-garde. In these latter niches, it assumes, besides the character of exclusivism, the distinctive note of experimental research. The electronic instrument is born before the music: it is now up to the composer to forge its peculiar characteristics. In the spiritual deserts of Varèse, as in Stockhausen's Gesang, electronics has barely appeared in the guise of experimental counterpoint: magnetic tapes and oscillators have fulfilled only a part of the musical discourse, not the focal point of the finished work; the first electronic poems are nothing more than an ensemble of acoustic instrumentation in which electronics appears as a simple noisy accompaniment.

The precocious genius of Pierre Henry, after the first concrete experiments, would have built the first bridge between avant-garde experimentation and modern electronics. It is 1967 when, thanks to the collaboration with composer Michel Colombier, the forward-looking "Messe Pour le Temps Présent" sees the light, the last of the mainstays of the "concrete" production of the Schaefferian school. In it, for the first time, avant-garde electronics appears clad in a modern sound, drawing strength from the latest rock experiences of the British school: through the form of the short composition, the Messe becomes a promoter of what will be popular electronic music, self-celebrating as not only a liturgy of the present but also a prophecy of the future. The turning point is encapsulated in the first part of the work, eponymous to it, divided into the five ingenious jests of Prologue, Psyché Rock, Jericho Jerk, Teen Tonic and Too Fortiche; in these twelve cumulative minutes, the experimentation takes a new turn, almost entirely abandoning the noise ambitions of concrete music: electronics assumes, besides the desired and necessary centrality in the compositional work, a new melodic guise, opening the doors to more traditional and known forms of techno-rock music. Through the danceable insights of Teen Tonic and Jericho Jerk, Henry and Colombier forge the beginnings of popular music, leaving behind the symphonic digressions of Varèse and Boulez: it is no accident that the compositional genius of Danny Elfman was inspired by a piece like Psyché Rock for the theme of a well-known cartoon television series.

La Reine Verte, the second episode of the work, channels the Messe onto the tracks of concrete experimentation, leaving behind the rock peculiarities of Too Fortiche: Marche Du Jeune Homme/La Reine et Les Insectes is a fascinating electroacoustic pastiche where vocal singing and electronic counterpoint call to mind Stockhausen's Gesang, a descriptive mantra that finds completion in the subsequent Rock Électronique, already several yards away from the techno-rock sensations of the previous pentateuch, experimental on par with the concrete digressions of the Schaefferian Groupe de Recherche. The Messe thus drowns in the amelodic experimentation of Voyage, the third segment of the work, where the liquid sonorities of Divinités Paisibles betray Henry's interest in the environmental use of electronic music; a prophetic mass also in this sense, exquisitely experimental, but forward-looking: the watercolors of Schulze's "Picture Music" would appear on the scene a few years later, before giving way to the first great masterpiece of ambient music of all time, Brian Eno's "Music for Airports". The work concludes with Variations Pour Une Porte Et Un Soupir, the fourth and final chapter dedicated to the more traditional experiments of the concrete music school.

The "Messe Pour le Temps Présent" would have, involuntarily, changed the history of electronic music. Still tied to concrete experimentation, elitist and unpopular, but for the first time able to provide a modern guise to the electroacoustic sound. Already rock, yet outside of rock. Already popular culture, yet outside of popular. Already of the future, yet still tied to the present. Enlightening.

Before one could perceive electronics as a mass phenomenon, a few more years will have to pass...

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