2020 IASA - FIAT/IFTA Joint Conference

Musique-concrète composer Pierre Henry is considered one of the major innovators in XXth century music. The Pierre Henry audio collection consists in around 400 acetate discs, 8,500 analog tapes and 4,000 DAT tapes, which have been produced, catalogued and carefully preserved through the years by Pierre Henry and the Son-Ré organization. The Bibliothèque Nationale de France has been commissioned by the composer before his death for the physical and digital preservation of the audio items in this unique collection. The preservation process began with the collaboration between Pierre Henry  himself and the Bnf studio in 2006. After his death in July 2017, in view of the emergency of safeguarding this heritage, the BNF has in turn chosen the Gecko company as the service provider for the digitization part, with a particular focus on fidelity. While technically the highest standards in the quest for migration fidelity have been met, with the use of DSD audio transfers and special in-house bit-to-bit DAT extraction techniques, the particularly creative approach of Pierre Henry towards sound manipulation makes it an exceptionally challenging job. In a way, each audio tape of the archives is a work of art.

In this presentation, Luc Verrier of the BNF with Adrien Bailly and Gaétan Chaignon of the Gecko company, will present the various aspects of this one-of-a-kind project.