Jean Schwarz

Jean Schwarz (born 1937) is a French composer of electroacoustic and concrete music, and a longtime composer-researcher at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in Paris. Beginning in the 1960s under the influence of Pierre Schaeffer, he developed an expansive body of acousmatic work that draws particularly on natural sound sources — water, wind, geological processes — processed and abstracted into sustained compositional meditations. His Ephèmère (1981) and subsequent works balance the physical immediacy of concrete sound with carefully developed formal structures. He has also worked extensively in sound design for film and theatre.