A French composer born March 14, 1934 in Toulon.
Pierre Boeswillwald had an eclectic training, ranging from engineering (electronics, sound engineering and later micro-computing) to the visual arts (decorative arts) and the theatre (mime, ancient theatre…).
He committed himself definitively to sound creation after having discovered the Club d’Essai Radiophonique of the Maison des Lettres of the Sorbonne (1953) and having met, notably, Jean Tardieu, Roland Barthes, Jean-Louis Barrault, Claude Piéplu, Jean Villar and Bernard Parmegiani. He experimented with work on recorded sound applied to the theatre and collaborated with many stage directors and companies, preparing the tapes and composing for numerous electroacoustic shows. He developed a passion for the concept of extended sound via loudspeaker, for the possibilities of the tape-recorder and he frequented the Club d'Essai Radiophonique. There he met Pierre Schaeffer, whose pupil he would become at the Paris Conservatory and the GRM (1968-1972).
Boeswillwald practised electroacoustic improvisation with the Groupes d'Expression Directe of Châteauvallon and of Opus N with Christian Clozier, Alain Savouret and Jacques Lejeune. As a composer-researcher he joined Christian Clozier and Françoise Barrière at the Groupe de Musiques Expérimentales of Bourges.
Boeswillwald has composed electroacoustic music, musique concrète and branched out into theatralisation experiments with music through loudspeakers, notably bringing actors into the mix. Among his works are La promenade du dimanche (1970); Homo dixit soliloque… te, with Provençal reciter (1977); Zémir, a radiophonic tale (1981); Pathos ad libitum, commissioned by the GMEB (1993); Les tympanes syncopées for two reciters, hurdy-gurdy and tape (1994); Au fond la mer est belle, commissioned by the IMEB (1999); The right sound in the right silence, commissioned by the French State (2003); Figures de sons (2010); La crépuscule des cités abandonnées, for female butô dancer and electroacoustics (2017).
Pierre Boeswillwald founded the classes of electroacoustic music at the conservatories du Plessis Robinson, Bourges and Amiens; he has taught electroacoustic and radiophonic composition, notably at the IMEB, Ircam and the University of Lille.