POUSSEUR, HENRI

born July 23, 1929, Malmdy, Belg. 20th-century Belgian composer whose works include several seemingly contradictory types of music. He wrote music for many different combinations of performers as well as for electronic instruments only; his Electre (1959) uses sounds produced both by live performers and by electronic machines. Pousseur studied at the Lige Conservatory (1947-52) and the Brussels Conservatory (1952-53). Influenced by such composers as Anton von Webern, he wrote serial music, in which various musical elements are rigidly controlled. Yet he also composed aleatoric, or chance, music, involving many types of highly unpredictable events. In Responses for Seven Musicians (1960; Rpons pour sept musiciens), the course of the composition is partly determined by lottery and by the players' free choice based on moves on a checkerboard. In Pousseur's opera-like The Mirror of Your Faust (1961-62; Le Miroire de votre Faust), the Faust story is given new twists; which one of four possible denouements a particular performance presents is determined by audience vote. Pousseur taught music widely in Europe and the United States. He also helped establish electronic-music studios in Cologne (1954), Milan (1956), and Brussels (1958). In his theoretical writings, such as Fragments thoriques I sur la musique exprimentale (1970; "Theoretic Pieces I: Experimental Music"), he argued that certain older methods of discussing and appraising music are no longer valid for recent music that makes use of certain new musical aims, resources, and techniques. Pousseur's later musical works include Crossed Colours (1967; Couleurs croises), a series of unusual variations on the civil-rights song "We Shall Overcome"; Crosses of Crossed Colours (1970; Croises des couleurs croises), a sequel to Crossed Colours for female voice, pianos, tape recorders, and two radio receivers dialed randomly to Indian and black prose and poetry recitals and political speeches; Invitation to Utopia (1971; Invitation l'Utopie); View on the Forbidden Gardens (1974; Vue sur les jardins interdits); and 19 (1977), for solo cello.