Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
French composer and pioneer of the musique concrète genre Pierre Henry has died at the age of 89, according to the French publication Le Monde.Henry was born in 1927 in Paris, and began experimenting with non-musical sounds as a teenager. His work with fellow French composer Pierre Schaeffer at the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (RTF) is credited as the creation of musique concrète, an experimental genre of electronic music in which the recorded sounds of natural materials are manipulated and arranged to create a musical composition. One of the genre's early foundational works includes Henry and Schaeffer's 1950 composition Symphonie pour un homme seul.Henry also composed the first musique concrète composition for a commercial film, 1952's Astrologie ou le miroir de la vie. His 1967 track "Psyché Rock" served as the basis for the theme song of popular animated series Futurama.