Henri Chopin (18 June 1922 – 3 January 2008) was a French avant-garde poet and musician.

Life

Henri Chopin was born in Paris, 18 June 1922, one of three brothers, and the son of an accountant. Both his siblings died during the war. One was shot by a German soldier the day after an armistice was declared in Paris, the other while sabotaging a train. Chopin was a French practitioner of

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wid ...

and

sound poetry Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literacy and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound p ...

, well known throughout the second half of the 20th century. His work, though iconoclastic, remained well within the historical spectrum of poetry as it moved from a spoken tradition to the printed word and now back to the spoken word again. He created a large body of pioneering recordings using early tape recorders, studio technologies and the sounds of the manipulated human voice. His emphasis on sound is a reminder that language stems as much from oral traditions as from classic literature, of the relationship of balance between order and chaos. Chopin is significant above all for his diverse spread of creative achievement, as well as for his position as a focal point of contact for the international arts. As poet, painter, graphic artist and designer, typographer, independent publisher, filmmaker, broadcaster and arts promoter, Chopin's work is a barometer of the shifts in European media between the 1950s and the 1970s. In 1966 he was with

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, Otto Muehl,

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and others a participant of the

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(''DIAS'') in London. In 1964 he created ''OU'', one of the most notable reviews of the second half of the 20th century, and he ran it until 1974. ''OUs contributors included

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, Brion Gysin, Gil J. Wolman, François Dufrêne, Bernard Heidsieck, John Furnival, Tom Phillips, and the Austrian sculptor, writer and

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pioneer

Raoul Hausmann Raoul Hausmann (July 12, 1886 – February 1, 1971) was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry, and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on ...

. His books included ''Le Dernier Roman du Monde'' (1971), ''Portrait des 9'' (1975), ''The Cosmographical Lobster'' (1976), ''Poésie Sonore Internationale'' (1979), ''Les Riches Heures de l'Alphabet'' (1992) and ''Graphpoemesmachine'' (2006). Henri also created many graphic works on his typewriter: the typewriter poems (also known as dactylopoèmes) feature in international art collections such as those of Francesco Conz in Verona, the Morra Foundation in Naples and Ruth and Marvin Sackner in Miami, and have been the subject of Australian, British and French retrospectives. His publication and design of the classic audio-visual magazines ''Cinquième Saison'' and ''OU'' between 1958 and 1974, each issue containing recordings as well as texts, images, screenprints and multiples, brought together international contemporary writers and artists such as members of Lettrisme and

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

, Jiri Kolar,

Ian Hamilton Finlay Ian Hamilton Finlay, CBE (28 October 1925 – 27 March 2006) was a Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener. Life Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas, to James Hamilton Finlay and his wife, Annie Pettigrew, both of Scots descent. He was e ...

, Tom Phillips, Brion Gysin,

and many others, as well as bringing the work of survivors from earlier generations such as

and

Marcel Janco Marcel Janco (, ; common rendition of the Romanian name Marcel Hermann Iancu ; 24 May 1895 – 21 April 1984) was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist. He was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Const ...

to a fresh audience. From 1968 to 1986 Henri Chopin lived in Ingatestone, Essex, but with the death of his wife Jean in 1985, he moved back to France. In 2001 with his health failing, he returned to England, living with his daughter and family at Dereham, Norfolk until his death on 3 January 2008.

Aesthetics

Chopin's ''poesie sonore'' aesthetics included a deliberate cultivation of a ''barbarian'' approach in production, using raw or crude sound manipulations to explore the area between distortion and intelligibility. He avoided high-quality, professional recording machines, preferring to use very basic equipment and ''bricolage'' methods, such as sticking matchsticks in the erase heads of a second-hand tape recorder, or manually interfering with the tape path.

Books

*Chopin, Henri. 1979. ''Poesie Sonore Internationale'', edited by Jean-Michel Place. Paris: Trajectoires.

Films on Henri Chopin

*''De Henri à Chopin, le dernier pape'' by Frédéric Acquaviva and Maria Faustino, DV, 3h10mn, 2002–2008 *''Henri Chopin, reflecting on OU'', by Silva Gabriela Béju, DV, 28', 2001, published in 2016 in "CRU"n°2 magazine (La Plaque Tournante, Berlin, dir. Frédéric Acquaviva and Loré Lixenberg)

References

External links

Archivio Conz

The History of ASCII (Text) Art by Joan G. Stark.
* Henri Chopin Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Listening

UbuWeb Sound: Henri Chopin
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chopin, Henri 1922 births 2008 deaths 20th-century French poets Sound poets French composers French expatriates in the Czech Republic Writers from Paris French male poets 20th-century French musicians 20th-century French male writers