Ferrari was born in Paris and studied the piano under Alfred Cortot, musical analysis under Olivier Messiaen and composition under Arthur Honegger. His first works were freely atonal.
In 1954, Ferrari went to the United States to meet Edgard Varese, whose Déserts he had heard on the radio, and had impressed him. This seems to have had a great effect on him, with the tape part in Déserts serving as inspiration for Ferrari to use magnetic tape in his own music.
In 1958 he co-founded the Groupe des Recherche Musicales with Pierre Schaeffer and François-Bernard Mâche. He has taught in institutions around the world, and has worked for film, theatre and radio.
By the early 1960, Ferrari had begun work on his Hétérozygote, a piece for magnetic tape which uses ambient environmental sounds to suggest a dramatic narrative. The use of ambient recordings was to become a distinctive part of Ferrari's musical language. More
Links:
Luc Ferrari: Presque Rien No. 4 (1998) performed at Other Minds 5,March 27th, 1999
Luc Ferrari performs the U.S. premiere of his composition Presque Rien No. 4, "La remontée du village" ("Almost Nothing No. 4, "The Ascent to the Village"; 1998) at the Other Minds Music Festival in 1999 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco. Download at archive.org
