Postwar Culture

Altagor was one of the pioneers of postwar sound poetry in Europe and exterted a powerful influence over its development from the 1940s to the 1970s. Fiercely independent, the autodidact poet, musician, composer, broadcaster, and artist sharply contested Lettrist claims to precedence in postwar Paris, and he made a strong impression on leading sound poets like Henri Chopin, who recognized Altagor as perhaps “the only phonetic poet who mounted an invented language of imaginary syllables and phonemes, which he knew to record, served up by a voice in unheard-of timbres.” Ultra-Lettrist François Dufrêne likewise praised his compositions as “the most significant of phonetic poetry.” Almost forgotten today, Altagor’s contribution to the history of contemporary sound poetry remains almost entirely unexplored.

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Born André Vernier on February 27, 1915, Altagor grew up in the remote province of Meurthe et Moselle in rural northeastern France, where he started working in the local mines at the age of 14. By the early 1930s, however, he was already composing novels and conventional poetry, but the decisive moment came a decade later with his discovery of “pure vocal/auditive sensations” as raw material for a new form of composition he called métapoésie in 1943. Conceived as an antidote to “utilitarian language,” Altagor’s sound poetry was born out of the trauma of the Second World War. “Do you think believe these sensations, which emanate directly from the living, are without value? Nothing is more profound than this direct language of interior dynamism, organized according to the laws of phonetics with an eye to the maximum expression.” For the next four decades Altagor continued to experiment and refine, devising elaborate systems of notation in complex scores that might easily qualify as some of the earliest and most striking examples of typewriter poetry, recording the behavior of sound frequencies on color-coded diagrams, inventing musical instruments such as the pantophone, designed to interact precisely with timbres of wordless voices in his métapoésies.

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Altagor’s commitment to  composing with pure accoustic sound quickly led him to explore new technologies in recording studios and radio. As early as 1946, he began preserving “permanent electronic auditions” of his métapoésies, which he broadcast at nearby Radio Lorraine for many years. After moving to Paris, Altagor collaborated with sound engineer, broadcaster, and experimental composer Pierre Schaeffer on various projects, including the 1956 of his 1956 Symphonie métapoésique on Radiodiffusion Française. This pioneering work made a particularly strong impression on Henri Chopin, who had met Altagor in 1953 and worked with his wife, Maguy Lovano, on his first studio recordings and broadcasts at Radio Lausaunne. Meanwhile Altagor participated in battles over avant-garde poetry, engaging in loud scuffles with Isidore Isou and the Lettrists, whose claims to precedence in sound poetry he sharply contested. Although unsuccessful in convincing Jean Paulhan to publish his Arguments pour un discours absolu as a counterpoint to Isou’s Introduction à une nouvelle poésie et à une nouvelle musique with Gallimard in the 1950s, Altagor participated in clashes around rival groups such as the Ultra-Lettrists and organized a public confrontation with Isou in 1958. For the rest of the decade and throughout the 1960s Altagor gave countless live performances and readio broadcasts, while working with local studios and record clubs to diffuse his work in Paris and throughout Europe. In the mid-1970s, Cramps Records included his work in an important anthology of sound poetry in Italy, but after this brief moment of notoriety Altagor disappeared from public view and died in obscurity in Paris in 1992.