Éliane Radigue

Born in Paris in 1932, composer Éliane Radigue is one of the most important pioneers of electronic music in the 20th century. Her work is characterised by different phases, but it’s always united by an exploration of thresholds and spaces that represent a dialogue between listening experience and inner feeling, between personal history and sensory memory. Over the course of her life, Éliane Radigue has produced an exploratory, demanding, and inspiring body of work that has influenced generations of musicians. 

After initially studying piano, harp, singing, and composition, she found new paths after her exposure to musique concrète and her collaboration with Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry at the French radio’s experimental studio from 1955 onwards. Between 1967 and 1968, she composed her first well-known works, using audio feedback and asynchronous structures generated by looping tape recordings. However, these early compositions, marked by extreme precision and a focus on thresholds and precarious balances, received little recognition at the time in France. 

It was in the New York downtown scene where Radigue was finally taken seriously as an artist. During her stay in New York, she met among others James Tenney, Malcom Goldstein, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, La Monte Young, Phill Niblock, Alvin Lucier and John Cage. From 1970 to 1971, Radigue was composer-in-residence at the New York University School of the Arts, where she had access to the Buchla Series 100 modular synthesiser (one of the first ever made) in Morton Subotnik’s studio. Radigue experimented with Moog, Electrocomp (EML), Putney (EMS) and ARP 2500 synthesizers. She bought her own ARP 2500, composing almost exclusively with this instrument in Paris over the following decades. During this period, she developed long forms with subtle variations that disappear and reappear between the story, carried by the music and the time needed for it to unfold. Her early works for synthesiser attracted considerable attention in the United States, and in 1973 she was invited to take up a residency at the electronic music studios of CalArts and the University of Iowa. 

In 1974 Radigue discovered Tibetan Buddhism and attended a spiritual retreat with Lama Pawo Rinpoche; in 1978 she returned to composing. Back in France, Radigue wrote a series of masterpieces of electronic music: Adnos II and III, as well as a larger cycle dedicated to the Tibetan yogi Jetsun Milarepa. In 2006 Radigue was awarded the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica for her last work for modular synthesiser, L’îIe re-sonante (2000). In 2019, the Centre for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe honoured the composer’s lifetime achievements by awarding her the Giga Hertz Prize for electronic music and sound art. 

In her third and ongoing creative phase she has been composing exclusively acoustic works, created in close collaboration with like-minded musicians. Éliane Radigue regards her instrumental pieces as living organisms that are constantly changing in the exchange between composer, musicians, and listeners. Among these projects is the monumental Occam Océan. This cycle, an ongoing work, already comprises more than 70 pieces for instrumental ensembles ranging from solo to orchestra. 

Throughout her life, Éliane Radigue has produced an exploratory, challenging, and inspiring body of work that is now influencing a whole new generation of musicians. 

As of October 2025