Biography

When André Riotte took up his position at the EURATOM research facility in Italy in 1961, he began to organise a cultural life for the two thousand scientists working there, including concerts, a record library, film club, etc.

Also in 1961, he defined the concept of "balanced cycle" (series of pitches and cycle of intervals) for which he calculated all the modulo-12 forms by computer. He gave a series of lectures at Ispra and Milan on the relationships between musical composition and modern scientific techniques.

In 1964, the San Fedele Centre in Milan organised a concert of his chamber music, to the acclaim of the Italian critics.

April 1968 saw a Paris production of Jubilation heuristique, a continuous variation constituting the musical background to the exhibition of the artist Aldine (Entremonde Gallery) with the use of an electro-acoustic automaton specially designed for the purpose.

He became involved in Xenakis' CEMAMu in 1969; there he presented the computer formalisation of a piece by Stravinsky in 1973, and a computer composition model in 1975, applied to Transe calme (1974) for piano.

From 1977 to 1979, he produced a series of 40 programmes on contemporary music for the 3rd Station of Belgian Radio Television??.

From 1978 to 1990, at Paris 8 University, first as a lecturer and then associate lecturer, he taught mathematical formalisation and computer processing of musical structures.

André Riotte has devoted himself entirely to music since 1982. In 1984, he began research work the 4X computer at the Ircam on the computer synthesis of pseudo-periodic sounds (inharmonics) with a view to the continuous transformation of synthetic timbres. He presented the results of this work at the International Computer Music Conference in Paris in 1984.

In 1985-86, he took part in a computer-assisted composition project at Ircam. The team that was assembled on this occasion became independent in 1987, calling itself CRIME (Collectif de Recherche Instruments Modèles Ecriture), which he chaired.

Wrote Partitions-Gouffres (1987) for 4 percussion instruments, all of the durations of which were determined with the assistance of a computer at Ircam.

In January 1988, with Marcel Mesnage (computer scientist, member of CRIME), he published, "a computer model of Stravinsky's 1st piece for string quartet", which was the completion of work he had commenced some fifteen years earlier; the model renders the score as it was written.

In March, he chaired the Modélisation session of the Symposium on Music and the Cognitive Sciences (Paris).

In February 1989, he ran a three-day course entitled "Contemporary Languages" in Dijon, for Principals and teachers of Music Schools in the Bourgogne Franche-Comté region.

As a Fellow of the French Society for Musical Analysis (SFAM), of which he became vice-chairman in 1993, he took part in preparations for the European Musical Analysis Congresses (Colmar, October 1989 - Montpellier, February 1995) within the Programmes Committees.

In October 1990, took part in the 2nd International Colloquium on "music and computer assistance" in Marseilles, where he ran the Round table on formalisation and score models.

In 1991, he gave presentations at a number of Conferences: Quadrivium in Metz, the first Spanish symposium on Musical Analysis at Oviedo, foundation of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music - ESCOM - at Trieste, where he was appointed to the Executive Committee.

From 1991 to 1998, he lectured at Ircam on the mathematical formalisation of music to doctorate students in 20th century Music and Musicology, and in the Composition and Computer Music course from 1990 to 1993.

In 1993, he was elected chairman of the Union des Conservatoires Municipaux, Seine Saint-Denis (UDCM 93) for a four year period of office.

After working on the editorial team of the review Analyse Musicale, he became actively involved in the launch of the new review, MUSURGIA, Analyse et pratique musicales, (published by ESKA) and in 1994 became chief editor. After 25 issues, he left the position in 2001 to devote himself to composing.

In 1997, he took part in the creation of the new French Society of Computer Music (SFIM) of which he was appointed chairman; he retired form the position in 1999 due to ill health.

In 2003, a grant from the Direction de la Musique gave rise to a "tribute to the composer André Riotte":

• A first concert was devoted to the works he composed in his youth, on the occasion of the publication of the CD "Le Passé Simple", a collection of most of these works.
• A conference by Riotte: "My musical adventure: from creative intuition to formalism and back", was illustrated with musical examples played by pianist Thérèse Malengreau.
• The grant also encouraged the preparation of a CD based on Météorite et ses Métamorphoses, to be published early in 2007.