Ragnar Grippe -

Ragnar Grippe is a Swedish avant-garde composer and recording artist. In 1977, he released two albums of musique concrète on Shandar and BIS.

Background

Ragnar Grippe was born on October 15, 1951, in Stockholm, Sweden. His mother, contralto Solwig Grippe, sang with Radiokören and taught voice at the Royal College of Music; his father worked as a producer at Sveriges Radio. Grippe first learned recorder, then studied cello at the Royal Music Conservatory in Stockholm. He also played six-string bass in teenage bands, but shifted toward composition near the end of his conservatory studies.

In 1971, he studied musicology at Stockholm University. His term project involved a visit to Elektronmusikstudion, a local electoacoustic studio, where director Knut Wiggen introduced him to analog electronic creation. Wiggen linked Grippe with Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris, where Grippe studied musique concrète and Pierre Schaeffer’s sound-morphology methods. He also studied French and architecture at Université d’Aix-Marseille.

Grippe contacted musique concrète pioneer Luc Ferrari, owner of ALM studio near Place Mouffetard, where Grippe created the 1973–75 pieces Capriccio, Experimenta I, Experimenta II, So Long, Ur Undrens Tid, Variations de voix, and What?. In 1974, Swedish painter Uno Svensson commissioned Grippe for an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, which featured processed voices and tape music within a visual-art installation.

In late 1975, Grippe entered McGill University in Montreal for electronic-music studies. The following spring, he gave music lectures at California universities. Back in Europe, Grippe accepted French and Swedish commissions, including Situation I for Spar, a solo ballet by choreographer Carolyn Carlson, performed by Paolo Bortoluzzi at Espace Cardin in Paris. Bortoluzzi commissioned Grippe for a subsequent La Scala bicentennial production.

In 1977, Galerie Shandar director Chantal Darcy commissioned Grippe for an exhibition of sand paintings by Indian-born artist Viswanadhan. At ALM, Grippe made program music with two Revox tape recorders, electric organ, castanets, and electric guitar. The Shandar project formed the basis of his first album, Sand. Meanwhile, BIS Records gathered Capriccio, Ur Undrens Tid, Situation I, and his 1975 piece Chamber Music on the 1977 release Electronic Compositions.

Discography: