Jean-Claude Raoul Olivier Risset

Jean-Claude Raoul Olivier Risset was born in 1938 in Le Puy, France. He studied piano, musical writing, and composition while completing parallel studies in mathematics and physics at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he earned a doctorate in science in 1967. His early career unfolded as much in laboratories as in conservatories. He worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey in the 1960s, contributing to research on brass synthesis, auditory illusions, and speech processing alongside figures such as Max Mathews and John Pierce. In 1969 he returned to France to join the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Marseille, where he later served as research director at the Laboratoire de Mécanique et d’Acoustique. He also held positions as chair of the computer department at IRCAM in Paris and spent residencies at institutions including Dartmouth College, Stanford’s CCRMA, and the MIT Media Laboratory. 

Risset became one of the first composers to use the computer as a tool for analysis and synthesis of sound at Bell Laboratories. Between 1964 and 1969 he created digital models of brass instruments, explored the perception of timbre, and produced auditory illusions, including tones that appear to rise or fall endlessly. He also compiled An Introductory Catalogue of Computer Synthesized Sounds in 1969, one of the earliest systematic surveys of digital sound possibilities. After establishing the first European system for digital sound synthesis at Orsay in 1970–71, he continued to experiment with new approaches to timbre and the spatial movement of sound. From 1975 to 1979 he directed the computer department at IRCAM in Paris, composing works including Songes and Passages that extended his research into artistic form. Based at the CNRS Laboratory of Mechanics and Acoustics in Marseille from 1979, he pursued composition and psychoacoustic research, producing Sud in 1985, which fused environmental recordings with computer-generated sounds, and pioneering interactive works including Duo pour un pianiste in 1989 at the MIT Media Lab. In later works such as Phases, Escalas, and his Violin Concerto for Mari Kimura and the Suntory Foundation, he continued to merge orchestral writing with computer processes, demonstrating how synthesis, analysis, and performance could converge in a single compositional vision.

His catalogue grew to more than seventy works, spanning orchestral music, fixed media, acousmatic pieces, and over thirty mixed works for instruments and electronics. His music was published on more than thirty recordings, including monographic releases such as Sud in 1985 and Elementa in 2001. He received major distinctions throughout his career, including the Bourges International Competition in 1980, the SACEM Grand Prix for Orchestral Music in 1981, the Ars Electronica Golden Nica in 1987, the Grand Prix National de la Musique in 1990, the Euphonie d’Or in 1992, the Magisterium Prize at Bourges in 1998, the CNRS Gold Medal in 1999, and the Giga-Hertz-Preis in 2009. He was named Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1989 and Commander of Arts and Letters in 2006, and received honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Córdoba. Risset passed away in 2016.