COSTIN MIEREANU - Poly-Art Recordings 1976-1982
Auryfa and Metaphon proudly present Poly-Art Recordings 1976-1982, a lavish six-CD box set collecting Costin Miereanu’s legendary series of self-published cassettes and LPs from 1982 and 1984. Culminating four years of meticulous work, this project breathes new life into these recordings, remastered from the original tapes by Stephan Mathieu and accompanied by restored artwork and a comprehensive essay by Vincent de Roguin.
Born in Bucharest in 1943 and naturalized as a French citizen in 1977, Miereanu occupied a singular position within the French new music landscape—one foot in the establishment, the other in a world of deeply personal, boundary-pushing creativity. Alongside his intricate orchestral works and demanding academic career, he also produced the semi-improvised solo performances and electroacoustic compositions featured in this collection. Drawing inspiration from Erik Satie, film soundtracks, semiology, Romanian folk and art music, Gilles Deleuze, avant-garde literature, Terry Riley, and atmospheric phenomena, these twelve pieces were crafted using an array of synthesizers—Minimoog, Polymoog, PPG Wave, Prophet-10—supplemented by piano, organ, and a handful of other instrumental sources. Their textural palette and occasional whimsy bear affinities with 1970s meditative synth music, yet they eschew psychedelic excess or cosmic grandeur. Instead, they reveal a vibrant, nuanced complexity that becomes more apparent with each listen, rooted in Miereanu’s extensive musical studies and commitment to the ideals of 1960s experimentalism. Within that period’s context, this music ultimately sails in the same sonic currents as Harold Budd and Brian Eno’s collaboration, and the output of David Behrman, Alvin Curran, or Laurie Spiegel.
Originally released on Miereanu’s own Poly-Art International ⁄ Records and initially met with limited attention, these recordings have since gained underground acclaim among new generations of listeners. They offer a rare synthesis of accessibility and formal ambition, reflecting Miereanu’s unwavering pursuit of artistic freedom, a world away from the high culture dogmatisms inherent to the European modernist tradition. His wide-ranging associations—from the spectralists (Horațiu Rădulescu, Tristan Murail, and Gérard Grisey) to mavericks such as Giacinto Scelsi, Luc Ferrari, and Walter Marchetti, as well as the French underground electronic music scene (including Philippe Besombes and Jean-Louis Rizet, who engineered much of this music, and Richard Pinhas)—help illuminate his unique artistic position.
While not anomalies in a career that could hardly be described as normal, these recordings hold a special place within Miereanu’s body of work. Few composers of his generation, particularly in France, have covered such a broad spectrum, with works for instrumental ensembles, opera, ballet, and radical tape music (Luna Cinese in 1975 on Cramps Records) but also performances, videos, and sound installations. Yet these wondrous modal keyboard fantasies remain among his greatest accomplishments. Consistently original and captivating, they possess an undeniable magic, standing as some of the most essential yet overlooked documents of French minimalism, early ambient, and nonconformist contemporary music from that era.
Biography
Costin Miereanu (born 27 February 1943) is a French composer and musicologist of Romanian birth. Studies with Alfred Mendelsohn, Stefan Nicuelscu, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti, Daniel Charles, Algirdas Julien Greimas, etc. Since 1981, he has been Professor of Philosophy, Aesthetics, and the Science of Art at the Sorbonne, as well as becoming artistic director of Éditions Salabert (1981) and co-founder (with Iannis Xenakis) of the Foundation Salabert. He was also co-artistic director of the Ensemble 2e2m between 1982 and 1985 and in 1983 he became director of the Centre de Recherches en Esthétique des Arts Musicaux at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. In 1991, he became director of the laboratory "Esthétique des Arts Contemporains", associated with the CNRS. Miereanu composed over 100 catalog musical works. He recorded the electroacoustic LP Luna Cinese for the Italian label Cramps Records in 1975, which earned him an inclusion Nurse With Wound list (1979). In 1982 and 1984, he self-published six solo synthesizer records on cassette and vinyl his Poly-Art Records imprint.
