After a childhood spent in Madagascar, François Bayle received training in music as an auditor in Olivier Messiaen’s harmony class at the Paris conservatory and as a student at the Darmstadt summer courses with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Regular contact with Pierre Schaeffer came in 1958 when he joined the Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM). He remained with this organization through its merge with the Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA), which he directed between 1975 and 1997. Bayle was one of the first to work in the international trend towards acousmatic music. He conceived and designed the acousmonium orchestra (1974), and founded the Acousmathèque (1991). Over the past decade, this venue has played host to hundreds of composers, and provided a site for the creation of thousands of works, concerts, and radio and recording productions.

François Bayle’s compositions have flowed in a steady stream since the 1960s, and may be broken up into distinct periods. The composer himself has identified these stages as so many, “utopias, where it is possible to explore the genesis of sonic movements, the grammar of their form, and their relationship to physical and psychological world events.” His work has been recognized with a number of prizes, including the Grand Prix des Compositeurs SACEM (1978), the Grand Prix du Disque (1981), the Prix Ars Electronica (Austria, 1989), the Grand prix de la musique de la Ville de Paris (1996), the Hommage du CIME (São Paulo, 1997), and the Grand Prix Charles Cros (1999), given in honorem for Jeîta and the whole of the 13-volume Cycle Bayle.

[Réseaux des arts médiatiques]