Pierre Mariétan 1935 -2025
Pierre Mariétan, a Swiss composer living in France since the 60s, died in Paris on March 23. This is an opportunity to highlight and pay tribute to the singular role he played both in the world of music and in the aesthetic consideration of the sound dimension of our everyday environment.
After studying music with Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Mariétan is the author of over 300 instrumental, orchestral, numbered-electro-acoustic and vocal works, as well as over 40 radio works, mainly for Radio France.
In constant dialogue with this compositional work, he soon became involved in the practical and artistic exploration of our living environment in terms of sound, refusing to confine music to the privileged time and place of the concert. He collaborates with landscape designers and architects such as Bernrad Lassus, Alain Sarfati, Ricardo Bofill, Kiyoshi Sey Takeyama... to create places where the aesthetic dimension of sound is taken into consideration, participating in the morphological design of spaces in the same way as the visual. In this respect, since 2006 he has directed the annual review Sounds dedicated to these issues and organizes Architecture, music and the environment held in Valais for 22 years.
He designs permanent or ephemeral musical installations that are not limited to sound additions or settings, but are musical works conceived to reveal the space in which they are installed.
Musical writing
In the same perspective, his musical writing cannot ignore the fact that we are constantly immersed in sound-saturated environments. Although very rigorous, it remains open-ended. It is aimed at an active, creative listener, an indispensable complement to the composer.
Parallel to his creative activities, in 1967 he founded and directed GERM (Groupe d'étude et de réalisation musicale) in Paris, which until the 90s produced the monthly "Portes de la Suisse" concerts in Paris. In addition to works by numerous contemporary European composers, GERM was one of the first to perform and invite to France American composers such as John Cage, Morton Feldman, John Adams, Earle Brown, Phill Niblock...
Pierre Mariétan also had a significant teaching and research activity. Director of the Garges Conservatory in the Paris region for seven years, responsible for a new teaching practice for five years in elementary schools in the Val-d'Oise, and with the Conservatoire Régional d'Orléans, he was a lecturer at Paris I then Paris VIII and at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles where he set up the Laboratoire d'Acoustique et Musique Urbaine before its definitive establishment at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture Paris La Villette where he taught for over 10 years.
Pierre Mariétan is :
Winner of the SACEM (France), WDR (Germany), NPO (Holland) and Etat du Valais (Switzerland) awards.
Shortlisted for the Mario Merz Prize.
He has twice represented Radio France in the Prix Italia with the Philharmonic Orchestra.
