The French composer Éliane Radigue, a pioneer of electronic music, has died in Paris, a month after her 94th birthday. In recent years, her figure had been claimed by artists and documentary filmmakers, appearing in the documentary ‘Sisters with Transistors’, dedicated to the first creators of electronic music.
Since the late 60s, Radigue began to experiment with radically minimalist and long-playing music, working with magnetic tapes through loops, feedbacks and sustained and dilated sounds. Radigue’s early compositions were influenced by the techniques of electroacoustic music that she had discovered while listening to the radio broadcasts of Pierre Schaeffer, a pioneer of musique concrete, of whom she would later be a student.
Already in the 1970s, during his stay in New York, Radigue incorporated electronic synthesizers into his work, first a borrowed Buchla and then the ARP 2500 analog modular synthesizer, which would become his main instrument for more than two decades.
His long, immersive drones evolved slowly, exploring microscopic changes in timbre or texture, and had a strong spiritual charge, linked to his interest in Tibetan Buddhism. His colossal work ‘Trilogie de la Mort’ was inspired by ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’, a tradition that he approached after the death of his son, Yves Arman, at the age of 35, in a car accident in Zaragoza.
In recent decades, Radigue continued composing, although he modified his working method and began to collaborate with performers and ensembles, giving rise to pieces such as Occam Ocean, inspired by the movement of the ocean. Artists such as The Avalanches, Maria Arnal and Matmos have mourned his death on social networks, remembering his influence and legacy.
