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111-517: The theoretical basis of musique concrète as a compositional practice was developed by French composer Pierre Schaeffer beginning in the early 1940s. It was largely an attempt to differentiate between music based on the abstract medium of notation and that created using so-called sound objects ( l'objet sonore ). By the early 1950s musique concrète was contrasted with "pure" elektronische Musik as then developed in West Germany – based solely on

222-399: A relief desk ( pupitre de relief , but also referred to as pupitre d'espace or potentiomètre d'espace ) and was intended to control the dynamic level of music played from several shellac players. This created a stereophonic effect by controlling the positioning of a monophonic sound source. One of five tracks, provided by a purpose-built tape machine, was controlled by the performer and

333-480: A shellac record recorder, a mixing desk with rotating potentiometers , mechanical reverberation units, filters , and microphones . This technology made a number of limited operations available to a composer: The application of the above technologies in the creation of musique concrète led to the development of a number of sound manipulation techniques including: The first tape recorders started arriving at ORTF in 1949; however, they were much less reliable than

444-534: A "symphony of noises". These journals were published in 1952 as A la recherche d'une musique concrète , and according to Brian Kane, author of Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice , Schaeffer was driven by: "a compositional desire to construct music from concrete objects – no matter how unsatisfactory the initial results – and a theoretical desire to find a vocabulary, solfège, or method upon which to ground such music. The development of Schaeffer's practice

555-573: A Concrete Music ") in 1952, which was a summation of his working methods up to that point. His only opera, Orphée 53 (" Orpheus 53 "), premiered in 1953. Schaeffer left the GRMC in 1953 and reformed the group in 1958 as the Groupe de Recherche Musicale[s] (GRM) (at first without "s", then with "s"). In 1954 Schaeffer founded traditional music label Ocora ("Office de Coopération Radiophonique") alongside composer, pianist, and musicologist Charles Duvelle , with

666-575: A Snack?" (1968), while the Grateful Dead 's album Anthem of the Sun (1968), which featured Berio student Phil Lesh on bass, features musique concrète passages that Pouncey compared to Varèse's Deserts and the "keyboard deconstructions" of John Cage and Conlon Nancarrow . The Beatles continued their use of concrète on songs such as " Strawberry Fields Forever ", " Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! " and " I Am

777-436: A common motor, each tape having an independent spool . The objective was to keep the three tapes synchronised from a common starting point. Works could then be conceived polyphonically , and thus each head conveyed a part of the information and was listened to through a dedicated loudspeaker. It was an ancestor of the multi-track player (four then eight tracks) that appeared in the 1960s. Timbres Durées by Olivier Messiaen with

888-406: A companion piece to his La Poésie d’aujourd’hui, un nouvel état d’intelligence (1921). Although La Lyrosophie only skirts the question of the cinema, this book posits that the general intellectual fatigue arising from the fast-paced nature of modern life, alongside an accelerated thought process, leads to a form of subjectivity termed lyrosophie. In this mode, the weakening of reason's control over

999-407: A creative role for the recording medium was introduced and Arnheim stated that: "The rediscovery of the musicality of sound in noise and in language, and the reunification of music, noise and language in order to obtain a unity of material: that is one of the chief artistic tasks of radio". Possible antecedents to musique concrète have been noted; Walter Ruttmann 's film Wochend ( Weekend ) (1930),

1110-402: A finished product. The Qwartz Electronic Music Awards has named several of its past events after Schaeffer. Pierre himself was a prize winner at the awards more than once. Commercial release of Schaeffer's work was limited at best; Schaeffer released his work to the public primarily to disseminate a new and avant-garde form of music. The original production of his marketed work was done by

1221-541: A manner of composing, indeed, a new mental framework of composing". Schaeffer had developed an aesthetic that was centred upon the use of sound as a primary compositional resource. The aesthetic also emphasised the importance of play ( jeu ) in the practice of sound based composition. Schaeffer's use of the word jeu , from the verb jouer , carries the same double meaning as the English verb to play : 'to enjoy oneself by interacting with one's surroundings', as well as 'to operate

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1332-502: A means to define values as precisely as some other synthesisers of the day. The development of the machine was constrained by several factors. It needed to be modular and the modules had to be easily interconnected (so that the synthesiser would have more modules than slots and it would have an easy-to-use patch). It also needed to include all the major functions of a modular synthesiser including oscillators , noise-generators, filters , ring-modulators , but an intermodulation facility

1443-1136: A musical instrument'. By 1951 the work of Schaeffer, composer- percussionist Pierre Henry, and sound engineer Jacques Poullin had received official recognition and the Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète, Club d 'Essai de la Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française was established at RTF in Paris, the ancestor of the ORTF . At RTF the GRMC established the first purpose-built electroacoustic music studio. It quickly attracted many who either were or were later to become notable composers, including Olivier Messiaen , Pierre Boulez , Jean Barraqué , Karlheinz Stockhausen , Edgard Varèse , Iannis Xenakis , Michel Philippot , and Arthur Honegger . Compositional "output from 1951 to 1953 comprised Étude I (1951) and Étude II (1951) by Boulez, Timbres-durées (1952) by Messiaen, Étude aux mille collants (1952) by Stockhausen, Le microphone bien tempéré (1952) and La voile d'Orphée (1953) by Henry, Étude I (1953) by Philippot, Étude (1953) by Barraqué,

1554-427: A new collective, called Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) and set about recruiting new members including Luc Ferrari , Beatriz Ferreyra , François-Bernard Mâche , Iannis Xenakis , Bernard Parmegiani , and Mireille Chamass-Kyrou . Later arrivals included Ivo Malec , Philippe Carson, Romuald Vandelle, Edgardo Canton and François Bayle . GRM was one of several theoretical and experimental groups working under

1665-543: A number of musical treatises and several plays) are often oriented towards his development of the genre, as well as the theoretics and philosophy of music in general. Today, Schaeffer is considered one of the most influential experimental, electroacoustic and subsequently electronic musicians , having been the first composer to utilize a number of contemporary recording and sampling techniques that are now used worldwide by nearly all record production companies. His collaborative endeavors are considered milestones in

1776-411: A parallel breakthrough to collage artist Christian Marclay 's use of vinyl records as a "noise-generating medium" in his own work. Reynolds wrote: "As sampling technology grew more affordable, DJs-turned-producers like Eric B. developed hip-hop into a studio-based art. Although there was no direct line traceable between the two Pierres and Marley Marl , it was as if musique concrète went truant from

1887-624: A performance situation; an attitude that has stayed with acousmatic music to the present day. After the longstanding rivalry with the electronic music of the Cologne studio had subsided, in 1970 the GRM finally created an electronic studio using tools developed by the physicist Enrico Chiarucci, called the Studio 54, which featured the "Coupigny modular synthesiser" and a Moog synthesiser. The Coupigny synthesiser , named for its designer François Coupigny, director of

1998-455: A presentation of Bayle's Expérience acoustique . The Acousmonium is a specialised sound reinforcement system consisting of between 50 and 100 loudspeakers , depending on the character of the concert, of varying shape and size. The system was designed specifically for the concert presentation of musique-concrète-based works but with the added enhancement of sound spatialisation. Loudspeakers are placed both on stage and at positions throughout

2109-525: A religiously based play. Jean Epstein Jean Epstein ( French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ ɛpʃtajn] ; 25 March 1897 – 2 April 1953) was a French filmmaker, film theorist, literary critic, and novelist. Although he is remembered today primarily for his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe 's The Fall of the House of Usher , he directed three dozen films and was an influential critic of literature and film from

2220-448: A secretary and translator for Auguste Lumière , considered one of the founders of cinema. Epstein started directing his own films in 1922 with Pasteur , followed by L'Auberge rouge and Coeur fidèle (both 1923). Film director Luis Buñuel worked as an assistant director to Epstein on Mauprat (1926) and La Chute de la maison Usher (1928). Epstein's criticism appeared in the early modernist journal L'Esprit Nouveau . During

2331-458: A set of sound recordings was produced, entitled Le solfège de l'objet sonore (Music Theory of the Acoustic Object), to provide examples of concepts dealt with in the treatise. The development of musique concrète was facilitated by the emergence of new music technology in post-war Europe. Access to microphones, phonographs, and later magnetic tape recorders (created in 1939 and acquired by

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2442-412: A sound collage in the film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), during the first transformation scene, as "pre-musique concrète". Ottorino Respighi 's Pines of Rome (1924) calls for a phonograph recording of birdsong to be played during the third movement. In 1942, French composer and theoretician Pierre Schaeffer began his exploration of radiophony when he joined Jacques Copeau and his pupils in

2553-572: A surprise hit in 1975 with " Autobahn ", which contained a "sampled collage of revving engines, horns and traffic noise". Stephen Dalton of The Times wrote: "This droll blend of accessible pop and avant-garde musique concrete propelled Kraftwerk across America for three months". Steve Taylor writes that industrial groups Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire continued the concrète tradition with collages constructed with tape manipulation and loops, while Ian Inglis credits Brian Eno for introducing new sensibilities "about what could be in included in

2664-402: A system that involved three operators: one in charge of the machines, a second controlling the mixing desk, and third to provide guidance to the others. Because of this the synthesiser and desk were combined and organised in a manner that allowed it to be used easily by a composer. Independently of the mixing tracks (24 in total), it had a coupled connection patch that permitted the organisation of

2775-470: A three-track tape recorder ; a machine with ten playback heads to replay tape loops in echo (the morphophone); a keyboard -controlled machine to play tape loops at preset speeds (the keyboard, chromatic , or Tolana phonogène ); a slide-controlled machine to replay tape loops at a continuously variable range of speeds (the handle, continuous, or Sareg phonogène ); and a device to distribute an encoded track across four loudspeakers , including one hanging from

2886-401: A way that will be peculiar to the gramophone record". The following year, 1931, Boris de Schloezer also expressed the opinion that one could write for the gramophone or for the wireless just as one can for the piano or the violin. Shortly after, German art theorist Rudolf Arnheim discussed the effects of microphonic recording in an essay entitled "Radio", published in 1936. In it the idea of

2997-417: A whole new technique of production, less dependent on performance skills, could be developed. Tape editing brought a new technique called " micromontage ", in which very small fragments of sound were edited together, thus creating completely new sounds or structures on a larger scale. During the GRMC period from 1951 to 1958, Schaeffer and Poullin developed a number of novel sound creation tools. These included

3108-468: A work of "blind cinema" without visuals, introduced recordings of environmental sound, to represent the urban soundscape of Berlin , two decades before musique concrète was formalised. Ruttmann's soundtrack has been retrospectively called musique concrète . According to Seth Kim-Cohen the piece was the first to "organise 'concrete' sounds into a formal, artistic composition." Composer Irwin Bazelon referred to

3219-465: A worldwide coverage in order to preserve African rural soundscapes. Ocora also served as a facility to train technicians in African national broadcasting services. Over the years, Schaeffer mentored a number of students who went on to have successful careers, including Éliane Radigue and the young Jean Michel Jarre , who called his mentor the first disc jockey . His last " étude " ( study ) came in 1959:

3330-493: A writer, penning various articles and essays for the Revue Musicale , a French journal of music. His first column, Basic Truths , provided a critical examination of musical aspects of the time. An ardent Catholic , Schaeffer began to write religiously based pieces, and in the same year as his Basic Truths he published his first novel: Chlothar Nicole — a short Christian novel . The Studio d'Essai , later Club d'Essai,

3441-410: Is a list of Schaeffer's musical works, showing his compositions and the year(s) they were recorded. Apart from his published and publicized music, Schaeffer conducted several musical (and specifically musique concrète-related) presentations via French radio. Although these broadcasts contained musical pieces by Schaeffer they cannot be adequately described as part of his main line of musical output. This

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3552-585: Is because the radio " essays ", as they were appropriately named, were mainly narration on Schaeffer's musical theories philosophies rather than compositions in and of themselves. Schaeffer's radio narratives include the following: Schaeffer's literary works, fiction and non-fiction, span a range of genres. He predominantly wrote treatises and essays, but also penned a film review and two plays. An ardent Catholic , Schaeffer wrote Chlothar Nicole (French: Clotaire Nicole ; published 1938)—a Christian novel or short story—and Tobias (French: Tobie ; published 1939)

3663-572: Is most widely and currently recognized for his accomplishments in electronic and experimental music , at the core of which stands his role as the chief developer of a unique and early form of avant-garde music known as musique concrète . The genre emerged in Europe from the utilization of new music technology developed in the post-war era, following the advance of electroacoustic and acousmatic music . Schaeffer's writings (which include written and radio-narrated essays, biographies, short novels,

3774-429: Is recognized today as an essential precursor to contemporary sampling practices. Schaeffer was among the first to use recording technology in a creative and specifically musical way, harnessing the power of electronic and experimental instruments in a manner similar to Luigi Russolo , whom he admired and from whose work he drew inspiration. Furthermore, he emphasized the importance of "playing" (in his term, jeu ) in

3885-456: The gramophone ". In the same period the American composer Henry Cowell , in referring to the projects of Nikolai Lopatnikoff , believed that "there was a wide field open for the composition of music for phonographic discs". This sentiment was echoed further in 1930 by Igor Stravinsky , when he stated in the revue Kultur und Schallplatte that "there will be a greater interest in creating music in

3996-413: The potentiomètre d'espace in normal use: One found one's self sitting in a small studio which was equipped with four loudspeakers—two in front of one—right and left; one behind one and a fourth suspended above. In the front center were four large loops and an executant moving a small magnetic unit through the air. The four loops controlled the four speakers, and while all four were giving off sounds all

4107-502: The École nationale supérieure des télécommunications , although it is not verifiable as to whether or not he ever actually attended this university. Later in 1934 Schaeffer entered his first employment as an engineer, briefly working in telecommunications for the Postes et Télécommunications in Strasbourg . In 1935 he began a relationship with a woman named Elisabeth Schmitt, and later in

4218-634: The " Groupe de Recherches Musicales " (a.k.a. GRM; now owned and operated by INA or the Institut national de l'audiovisuel ), the company which he initially had formed around his creations. Other music was broadcast live (Pierre himself being notable on French radio at the time). Some individual tracks found their way into the use of other artists, with Pierre's work being fronted in mime performances and ballets . Now after his death, various musical production companies, such as Disques Adès and Phonurgia Nova have been granted rights to distribute his work. Below

4329-634: The " Study of Objects " ( Études aux Objets ). Schaeffer became an associate professor at the Paris Conservatoire from 1968 to 1980 after creating a "class of fundamental music and application to the audiovisual." In the aftermath of the 1988 Armenian earthquake , the 78-year-old Schaeffer led a 498-member French rescue team to look for survivors in Leninakan, and worked there until all foreign personnel were asked to leave. Schaeffer suffered from Alzheimer's disease later in his life, and died from

4440-567: The 1960s represented the height of confluence between rock and academic music, noting that composers like Luciano Berio and Pierre Henry found likeness in the "distorting-mirror" sound of psychedelic rock , and that concrète 's contrasting tones and timbres were suited to the effects of psychedelic drugs . Following the Beatles' example, many groups incorporated found sounds into otherwise typical pop songs for psychedelic effect, resulting in "pop and rock musique concrète flirtations"; examples include

4551-724: The DVD collection Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s . Epstein died in 1953 from a cerebral hemorrhage . Paradoxically, Jean Epstein's significance as a stylist, poet, and theoretician has grown despite the absence of his films. Many of his masterpieces, including "Mor’Vran" (1931), "L’Or des mers" (1933), and "Les Berceaux" (1934), have never undergone restoration. Nevertheless, his early writings brought significant inspiration within European continental philosophy , specifically those currents dealing with realism and materialism. His theory of film began with La Lyrosophie (1922),

Musique concrète - Misplaced Pages Continue

4662-469: The Edit) " (1984), Meat Beat Manifesto 's Storm the Studio (1989) and the work of Public Enemy, Negativland and People Like Us , among other examples. Pierre Schaeffer Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer ( English pronunciation: / p iː ˈ ɛər ˈ h ɛ n r iː m ə ˈ r iː ˈ ʃ eɪ f ər / , French pronunciation: [ʃɛfɛʁ] ; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995)

4773-511: The French Radio Institution. This gave him a new studio, which included a tape recorder . This was a significant development for Schaeffer, who previously had to work with phonographs and turntables to produce music. Schaeffer is generally acknowledged as being the first composer to make music using magnetic tape . His continued experimentation led him to publish À la Recherche d'une Musique Concrète (French for " In Search of

4884-602: The Group for Technical Research, and the Studio 54 mixing desk had a major influence on the evolution of GRM and from the point of their introduction on they brought a new quality to the music. The mixing desk and synthesiser were combined in one unit and were created specifically for the creation of musique concrète. The design of the desk was influenced by trade union rules at French National Radio that required technicians and production staff to have clearly defined duties. The solitary practice of musique concrète composition did not suit

4995-761: The Lovin' Spoonful 's " Summer in the City " (1966), Love 's " 7 and 7 Is " (1967) and The Box Tops ' " The Letter " (1967). Popular musicians more versed in modern classical and experimental music utilised elements of musique concrète more maturely, including Zappa and the Mothers of Invention on pieces like the Edgard Varèse tribute " The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet " (1966), " The Chrome Planted Megaphone of Destiny " and Lumpy Gravy (both 1968), and Jefferson Airplane 's "Would You Like

5106-534: The Middle East Radio studios processed the material using reverberation, echo, voltage controls, and re-recording. The resulting tape-based composition, entitled The Expression of Zaar , was presented in 1944 at an art gallery event in Cairo. El-Dabh has described his initial activities as an attempt to unlock "the inner sound" of the recordings. While his early compositional work was not widely known outside of Egypt at

5217-614: The Schaeffer's Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (Research Group on Concrete Music) in 1952), facilitated by an association with the French national broadcasting organization, at that time the Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française, gave Schaeffer and his colleagues an opportunity to experiment with recording technology and tape manipulation. In 1948, a typical radio studio consisted of a series of shellac record players ,

5328-560: The Walrus " (all 1967), before the approach climaxed with the pure musique concrète piece " Revolution 9 " (1968); afterwards, John Lennon , alongside wife and Fluxus artist Yoko Ono , continued the approach on their solo works Two Virgins (1968) and Life with the Lions (1969). The musique concrète elements present on Pink Floyd 's best-selling album The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), including

5439-460: The academy and became street music, the soundtrack to block parties and driving." He described this era of hip hop as "the most vibrant and flourishing descendant – albeit an indirect one – of musique concrète ". Chicago Reader ' s J. Niimi writes that when Public Enemy producers the Bomb Squad "unwittingly revisited" the concept of musique concrète with their sample-based music, they proved that

5550-467: The acoustic image". As of 2010, the Acousmonium was still performing, with 64 speakers, 35 amplifiers, and 2 consoles. Although Schaeffer's work aimed to defamiliarize the used sounds, other composers favoured the familiarity of source material by using snippets of music or speech taken from popular entertainment and mass media, with the ethic that "truly contemporary art should reflect not just nature or

5661-408: The audience, rather than just across the front stage. On stage, the control system allowed a performer to position a sound either to the left or right, above or behind the audience, simply by moving a small, hand held transmitter coil towards or away from four somewhat larger receiver coils arranged around the performer in a manner reflecting the loudspeaker positions. A contemporary eyewitness described

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5772-499: The breaking down of the structured production of traditional instruments, harmony , rhythm, and even music theory itself, in an attempt to reconstruct music from the bottom up. From the contemporary point of view, the importance of Schaeffer's musique concrète is threefold. He developed the concept of including any and all sounds into the vocabulary of music. At first he concentrated on working with sounds other than those produced by traditional musical instruments. Later on, he found it

5883-519: The canon of popular music", citing his 1970s ambient work and the musique concrete collages on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981), which combines tape samples with synthesised sounds. With the emergence of hip hop music in the 1980s, deejays such as Grandmaster Flash utitlised turnables to "[montage] in real time" with portions of rock, R&B and disco records, in order to create groove -based music with percussive scratching ; this provided

5994-464: The cash register sounds on " Money ", have been cited as notable examples of the practice's influence on popular music. Also in 1973, German band Faust released The Faust Tapes ; priced in the United Kingdom at 49 pence, the album was described by writer Chris Jones as "a contender for the most widely heard piece of musique concrete" after "Revolution 9". Another German group, Kraftwerk , achieved

6105-519: The centre of the ceiling (the potentiomètre d'espace ). Speed variation was a powerful tool for sound design applications. It had been identified that transformations brought about by varying playback speed lead to modification in the character of the sound material: The phonogène was a machine capable of modifying sound structure significantly and it provided composers with a means to adapt sound to meet specific compositional contexts. The initial phonogènes were manufactured in 1953 by two subcontractors:

6216-571: The chromatic phonogène by a company called Tolana, and the sliding version by the SAREG Company. A third version was developed later at ORTF. An outline of the unique capabilities of the various phonogènes can be seen here: This original tape recorder was one of the first machines permitting the simultaneous listening of several synchronised sources. Until 1958 musique concrète, radio and the studio machines were monophonic . The three-head tape recorder superposed three magnetic tapes that were dragged by

6327-457: The concept of musique acousmatique . Schaeffer had borrowed the term acousmatic from Pythagoras and defined it as: " Acousmatic, adjective : referring to a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it ". In 1966 Schaeffer published the book Traité des objets musicaux (Treatise on Musical Objects) which represented the culmination of some 20 years of research in the field of musique concrète . In conjunction with this publication,

6438-529: The condition in Aix-en-Provence in 1995. He was 85 years old. He is buried in Delincourt in the green Vexin region (55 minutes from Paris) where he used to have his countryside property. Schaeffer was thereafter remembered by many of his colleagues with the title, "Musician of Sounds". Sound is the vocabulary of nature. The term musique concrète (French for " real music ", literally " concrete music "),

6549-428: The creation of music. Schaeffer's idea of jeu comes from the French verb jouer , which carries the same double meaning as the English verb play : 'to enjoy oneself by interacting with one's surroundings', as well as 'to operate a musical instrument'. This notion is at the core of the concept of musique concrète, and reflects on freely improvised sound , or perhaps more specifically electroacoustic improvisation , from

6660-774: The crows, in Breton ) filmed in Sein , L'Or des mers filmed in Hoëdic , Le Tempestaire filmed in Belle Île . Chanson d'Armor is known as the first Breton -language film in history. His two novels also take place in Breton isles: L'Or des mers in Ouessant and Les Recteurs et la sirène in Sein. In August 2005, his films The Three-Sided Mirror (1927) and Le Tempestaire (1947) were restored and re-released on

6771-411: The disk, in contact with the tape. A sound up to four seconds long could be recorded on the looped tape and the ten playback heads would then read the information with different delays, according to their (adjustable) positions around the disk. A separate amplifier and band-pass filter for each head could modify the spectrum of the sound, and additional feedback loops could transmit the information to

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6882-710: The early 1920s through the late 1940s. He is often associated with French Impressionist Cinema and the concept of photogénie . Epstein was born in Warsaw , Kingdom of Poland (then a part of the Russian Empire) to a French-Jewish father and Polish mother. After his father died in 1908, the family relocated to Switzerland , where Epstein remained until beginning medical school at the University of Lyon in France. While in Lyon, Epstein served as

6993-514: The early 1980s, Pierre Schaeffer distanced himself from the contemporary musical scene after criticizing the avant-garde of the 1950s, which intended to break with tradition. Schaeffer recognized the virtuoso Otavio Henrique Soares Brandão as his most faithful disciple, who under his guidance performed a reading of his work "Traité des Objets Musicaux". This reading aims to create an innovative piano and musical instrumental technique that does not break with tradition. Pierre Schaeffer wrote four texts on

7104-555: The feedback between two tape recorders and a microphone. Pierre's GRM student Jean Michel Jarre went on to great international success. Jarre's 1997 album Oxygene 7-13 is dedicated to Schaeffer. Pierre Henry also made a tribute to the man, composing his Écho d'Orphée, Pour P. Schaeffer alongside him for Schaeffer's last work and second compilation, L'Œuvre Musicale . His other notable pupils include Joanna Bruzdowicz , Jorge Antunes , Bernard Parmegiani , Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux , Armando Santiago , Elzbieta Sikora . In

7215-403: The first of which was Lycée Saint-Sigisbert , located in his hometown of Nancy. Afterwards he moved westwards in 1929 to the École Polytechnique in Paris and finally completed his education in the capital at the École supérieure d'électricité , in 1934. Schaeffer received a diploma in radio broadcasting from the École Polytechnique . He may have also received a similar qualification from

7326-602: The foundation of the Studio d'Essai de la Radiodiffusion nationale . The studio originally functioned as a center for the French Resistance on radio, which in August 1944 was responsible for the first broadcasts in liberated Paris. It was here that Schaeffer began to experiment with creative radiophonic techniques using the sound technologies of the time. In 1948 Schaeffer began to keep a set of journals describing his attempt to create

7437-439: The functions (though not the title) of Group Director to colleagues. Since 1961 GRM has had six Group Directors: Michel Philippot (1960–1961), Luc Ferrari (1962–1963), Bernard Baschet and François Vercken (1964–1966). From the beginning of 1966, François Bayle took over the direction for the duration of thirty-one years, to 1997. He was then replaced by Daniel Teruggi. The group continued to refine Schaeffer's ideas and strengthened

7548-510: The group at the end of 1957, and immediately stated his disapproval of the direction the GRMC had taken. A proposal was then made to "renew completely the spirit, the methods and the personnel of the Group, with a view to undertake research and to offer a much needed welcome to young composers". Following the emergence of differences within the GRMC, Pierre Henry, Philippe Arthuys, and several of their colleagues, resigned in April 1958. Schaeffer created

7659-465: The histories of electronic and experimental music. Schaeffer was born in Nancy in 1910. His parents were both musicians (his father was a violinist; his mother, a singer), and at first it seemed that Pierre would also take on music as a career. However, his parents discouraged his musical pursuits from childhood and had him educated in engineering. He studied at several universities in this inclination,

7770-571: The industrial-urban environment but the mediascape in which humans increasingly dwelled", according to writer Simon Reynolds . Composers such as James Tenney and Arne Mellnäs created pieces in the 1960s that recontextualised the music of Elvis Presley and the singer's own voice, respectively, while later in the decade, Bernard Parmegiani created the pieces Pop'electric and Du pop a l'ane , which used fragments of musical genres such as easy listening , dixieland , classical music and progressive rock . Reynolds writes that this approach continued in

7881-509: The introduction of the Coupigny. Pierre Henry had used oscillators to produce sounds as early as 1955. But a synthesiser with envelope control was something Pierre Schaeffer was against, since it favoured the preconception of music and therefore deviated from Schaeffer's principle of "making through listening". Because of Schaeffer's concerns the Coupigny synthesiser was conceived as a sound-event generator with parameters controlled globally, without

7992-457: The late 1960s onward, and particularly in France, the term acousmatic music ( musique acousmatique ) was used in reference to fixed media compositions that utilized both musique concrète- based techniques and live sound spatialisation. In 1928 music critic André Cœuroy wrote in his book Panorama of Contemporary Music that "perhaps the time is not far off when a composer will be able to represent through recording, music specifically composed for

8103-523: The later work of musicians Matmos , whose A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure (2001) was created with the sounds of cosmetic surgery , and the "pop- collage " work of John Oswald , who referred to the approach as ' plunderphonics '. Oswald's Plexure (1993) was created using recognisable elements of rock and pop music from 1982 to 1992. In the 1960s, as popular music began to increase in cultural importance and question its role as commercial entertainment, many popular musicians began taking influence from

8214-531: The lead on work that began in the early 1950s, with Jacques Poullin's potentiomètre d'espace, a system designed to move monophonic sound sources across four speakers, Bayle and the engineer Jean-Claude Lallemand created an orchestra of loudspeakers ( un orchestre de haut-parleurs ) known as the Acousmonium in 1974. An inaugural concert took place on 14 February 1974 at the Espace Pierre Cardin in Paris with

8325-402: The machines within the studio. It also had a number of remote controls for operating tape recorders. The system was easily adaptable to any context, particularly that of interfacing with external equipment. Before the late 1960s the musique concrète produced at GRM had largely been based on the recording and manipulation of sounds, but synthesised sounds had featured in a number of works prior to

8436-539: The making of Coeur fidèle , Epstein chose to film a simple story of love and violence "to win the confidence of those, still so numerous, who believe that only the lowest melodrama can interest the public", and also in the hope of creating "a melodrama so stripped of all the conventions ordinarily attached to the genre, so sober, so simple, that it might approach the nobility and excellence of tragedy". He made several documentaries about Brittany . These include Finis Terræ filmed in Ouessant , Mor vran (The sea of

8547-424: The manner in which sound recording revealed what was hidden in the act of basic acoustic listening. Epstein's reference to this "phenomenon of an epiphanic being", which appears through the transduction of sound, proved influential on Schaeffer's concept of reduced listening. Schaeffer would explicitly cite Jean Epstein with reference to his use of extra-musical sound material. Epstein had already imagined that "through

8658-403: The mixed pieces Toute la lyre (1951) and Orphée 53 (1953) by Schaeffer/Henry, and the film music Masquerage (1952) by Schaeffer and Astrologie (1953) by Henry. In 1954 Varèse and Honegger visited to work on the tape parts of Déserts and La rivière endormie ". In the early and mid 1950s Schaeffer's commitments to RTF included official missions that often required extended absences from

8769-426: The musical values they were potentially containing". According to Pierre Henry , "musique concrète was not a study of timbre, it is focused on envelopes, forms. It must be presented by means of non-traditional characteristics, you see … one might say that the origin of this music is also found in the interest in 'plastifying' music, of rendering it plastic like sculpture…musique concrète, in my opinion … led to

8880-466: The musique concrète composers of the 1950s" via Fairlight samplers instead of tape. In a piece for Pitchfork , musicians Matmos noted the use of musique concrète in later popular music, including the crying baby effects in Aaliyah 's " Are You That Somebody? " (1998) or Missy Elliott 's " backwards chorus ", while noting that the aesthetic was arguably built upon by works including Art of Noise's " Close (to

8991-408: The notion that cinema possesses a magical quality due to its ability to transcend certain limitations of representation, surpassing "the resemblance of things" and achieving an "efficiency superior to forms," which he regards as the pinnacle of cinematography. However, he is keen to emphasize that these transgressions and achievements are not exclusive to a particular avant-garde cinema. In fact, Epstein

9102-405: The other four tracks each supplied a single loudspeaker. This provided a mixture of live and preset sound positions. The placement of loudspeakers in the performance space included two loudspeakers at the front right and left of the audience, one placed at the rear, and in the centre of the space a loudspeaker was placed in a high position above the audience. The sounds could therefore be moved around

9213-459: The performance space and a mixing console is used to manipulate the placement of acousmatic material across the speaker array, using a performative technique known as sound diffusion . Bayle has commented that the purpose of the Acousmonium is to "substitute a momentary classical disposition of sound making, which diffuses the sound from the circumference towards the centre of the hall, by a group of sound projectors which form an 'orchestration' of

9324-534: The post-war avant-garde, including the Beatles , who incorporated techniques such as tape loops, speed manipulation, and reverse playback in their song " Tomorrow Never Knows " (1966). Bernard Gendron describes the Beatles' musique concrète experimentation as helping popularise avant-garde art in the era, alongside Jimi Hendrix 's use of noise and feedback , Bob Dylan 's surreal lyricism and Frank Zappa 's "ironic detachment". In The Wire , Edwin Pouncey wrote that

9435-414: The question "who says what to whom?" Schaeffer added "how?", thereby creating a platform for research into audiovisual communication and mass media, audible phenomena and music in general (including non-Western musics). At the GRM the theoretical teaching remained based on practice and could be summed up in the catch phrase do and listen . Schaeffer kept up a practice established with the GRMC of delegating

9546-408: The recording head. The resulting repetitions of a sound occurred at different time intervals, and could be filtered or modified through feedback. This system was also easily capable of producing artificial reverberation or continuous sounds. At the premiere of Pierre Schaeffer's Symphonie pour un homme seul in 1951, a system that was designed for the spatial control of sound was tested. It was called

9657-781: The same year Schaeffer discussed, in writing, the question surrounding the transformation of time perceived through recording. The essay evidenced knowledge of sound manipulation techniques he would further exploit compositionally. In 1948 Schaeffer formally initiated "research in to noises" at the Club d'Essai and on 5 October 1948 the results of his initial experimentation were premiered at a concert given in Paris. Five works for phonograph – known collectively as Cinq études de bruits (Five Studies of Noises) including Étude violette ( Study in Purple ) and Étude aux chemins de fer (Study with Railroads) – were presented. By 1949 Schaeffer's compositional work

9768-683: The shellac players, to the point that the Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950–1951) was mainly composed with records even if the tape recorder was available. In 1950, when the machines finally functioned correctly, the techniques of the studio were expanded. A range of new sound manipulation practices were explored using improved media manipulation methods and operations such as continuous speed variation. A completely new possibility of organising sounds appeared with tape editing, which permitted tape to be spliced and arranged with much more precision. The "axe-cut junctions" were replaced with micrometric junctions and

9879-523: The standpoint of Schaeffer's work and research. In 1955, Éliane Radigue , an apprentice of Pierre Schaeffer at Studio d'Essai , learned to cut, splice and edit tape using his techniques. She then went on to work as an assistant to Pierre Henry in 1967. However, she became more interested in tape feedback and began working on her own pieces. She composed several works ( Jouet Electronique [1967], Elemental I [1968], Stress-Osaka [1969] , Usral [1969] , Ohmnht [1970] Vice Versa, etc [1970]) by processing

9990-817: The station, Schaeffer experimented with records and an assortment of other devices—the sounds they made and the applications of those sounds—after convincing the radio station's management to allow him to use their equipment. This period of experimentation was significant for Schaeffer's development, bringing forward many fundamental questions he had on the limits of modern musical expression . In these experiments, Pierre tried playing sounds backwards, slowing them down, speeding them up and juxtaposing them with other sounds, all techniques which were virtually unknown at that time. He had begun working with new contemporaries whom he had met through RTF, and as such his experimentation deepened. Schaeffer's work gradually became more avant-garde , as he challenged traditional musical style with

10101-448: The studios. This led him to invest Philippe Arthuys with responsibility for the GRMC in his absence, with Pierre Henry operating as Director of Works. Pierre Henry's composing talent developed greatly during this period at the GRMC and he worked with experimental filmmakers such as Max de Haas, Jean Grémillon , Enrico Fulchignoni, and Jean Rouch and with choreographers including Dick Sanders and Maurice Béjart. Schaeffer returned to run

10212-416: The subconscious results in projecting subconscious sentiments onto the conscious intellectual plane. The theory developed emphasizes that aesthetic pleasure is intricately tied to the stimulation of ineffable subconscious emotional associations. It proposes a view of poetic language wherein the sign, regardless of the reader's subjective imposition of beauty, remains aesthetically inexpressive. Epstein posits

10323-575: The technical assistance of Pierre Henry was the first work composed for this tape recorder in 1952. A rapid rhythmic polyphony was distributed over the three channels. This machine was conceived to build complex forms through repetition, and accumulation of events through delays , filtering and feedback . It consisted of a large rotating disk, 50 cm in diameter, on which was stuck a tape with its magnetic side facing outward. A series of twelve movable magnetic heads (one each recording head and erasing head, and ten playback heads) were positioned around

10434-590: The technique "worked great as pop". In 1989, John Diliberto of Music Technology described the group Art of Noise as having both digitised and synthesised musique concrète and "locked it into a crunching groove and turned it into dance music for the '80s". He wrote that while Schaeffer and Henry used tapes in their work, Art of Noise "uses Fairlight CMIs and Akai S1000 samplers and the skyscrapers of multitrack recording to create their updated sound". As described by Will Hodgkinson , Art of Noise brought classical and avant-garde sounds into pop by "[aiming] to emulate

10545-577: The time, El-Dabh would eventually gain recognition for his influential work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in Manhattan in the late 1950s. Following Schaeffer's work with Studio d'Essai at Radiodiffusion Nationale during the early 1940s he was credited with originating the theory and practice of musique concrète. The Studio d'Essai was renamed Club d'Essai de la Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française in 1946 and in

10656-427: The time, the distance of the unit from the loops determined the volume of sound sent out from each. The music thus came to one at varying intensity from various parts of the room, and this spatial projection gave new sense to the rather abstract sequence of sound originally recorded. The central concept underlying this method was the notion that music should be controlled during public presentation in order to create

10767-624: The topic: "Apropos de la Transcription pour Piano par Otavio Brandão de l'Étude aux Objets" (1988); "Réponse à Otávio", in text of the program of the Soares Brandão concert at Salle Pleyel in honor of Schaeffer's eightieth birthday (1990); "Declaration de Pierre Schaeffer sur Ibis et Otavio Soares Brandão" (1990); and "Déclaration de Pierre Schaeffer (Porte Parole)" (1993). Many rap albums, such as It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back by Public Enemy and 3 Feet High And Rising by De La Soul take ordinary sounds and use them to create

10878-460: The transposition of natural sounds, it becomes possible to create chords and dissonances, melodies and symphonies of noise, which are a new and specifically cinematographic music". As a student in Cairo in the early to mid-1940s, Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh began experimenting with electroacoustic music using a cumbersome wire recorder . He recorded the sounds of an ancient zaar ceremony and at

10989-485: The umbrella of the Schaeffer-led Service de la Recherche at ORTF (1960–1974). Together with the GRM, three other groups existed: the Groupe de Recherches Image GRI, the Groupe de Recherches Technologiques GRT and the Groupe de Recherches Langage which became the Groupe d'Etudes Critiques. Communication was the one theme that unified the various groups, all of which were devoted to production and creation. In terms of

11100-443: The use of electronically produced sounds rather than recorded sounds – but the distinction has since been blurred such that the term "electronic music" covers both meanings. Schaeffer's work resulted in the establishment of France's Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète (GRMC), which attracted important figures including Pierre Henry , Luc Ferrari , Pierre Boulez , Karlheinz Stockhausen , Edgard Varèse , and Iannis Xenakis . From

11211-431: The use of various devices and practices. Eventually, a unique variety of electronic instruments—ones which Schaeffer and his colleagues created, using their own engineering skills—came into play in his work, like the chromatic, sliding and universal phonogenes , François Bayle 's Acousmonium and a host of other devices such as gramaphones and some of the earliest tape recorders . In 1938 Schaeffer began his career as

11322-406: The year married her and with her had his first child, Marie-Claire Schaeffer. He and his new family then officially relocated to Paris in 1936 where began his work in radio broadcasting and presentation. It was there that he began to move away from his initial interests in telecommunications and to pursue music instead, combining his abilities as an engineer with his passion for sound. In his work at

11433-462: Was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist , acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète ( GRMC ). His innovative work in both the sciences—particularly communications and acoustics —and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end of World War II, as well as his anti-nuclear activism and cultural criticism garnered him widespread recognition in his lifetime. Schaeffer

11544-400: Was coined by Schaeffer in 1948. Schaeffer believed traditionally classical (or as he called it, "serious") music begins as an abstraction (musical notation) that is later produced as audible music. Musique concrète, by contrast, strives to start with the "concrete" sounds that emanate from base phenomena and then abstracts them into a composition. The term musique concrète is then, in essence,

11655-475: Was founded in 1942 by Pierre Schaeffer at the Radiodiffusion Nationale (France) . It played a role in the activities of the French resistance during World War II, and later became a center of musical activity. In 1949, Schaeffer met the percussionist-composer Pierre Henry , with whom he collaborated on many compositions, and in 1951, he founded the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète ( GRMC ) in

11766-498: Was informed by encounters with voice actors, and microphone usage and radiophonic art played an important part in inspiring and consolidating Schaeffer's conception of sound-based composition. Another important influence on Schaeffer's practice was cinema, and the techniques of recording and montage, which were originally associated with cinematographic practice, came to "serve as the substrate of musique concrète". Marc Battier notes that, prior to Schaeffer, Jean Epstein drew attention to

11877-407: Was known publicly as musique concrète . Schaeffer stated: "when I proposed the term 'musique concrète,' I intended … to point out an opposition with the way musical work usually goes. Instead of notating musical ideas on paper with the symbols of solfege and entrusting their realization to well-known instruments, the question was to collect concrete sounds, wherever they came from, and to abstract

11988-486: Was less effective in generating precisely defined frequencies and triggering specific sounds. The Coupigny synthesiser also served as the model for a smaller, portable unit, which has been used down to the present day. In 1966 composer and technician François Bayle was placed in charge of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales and in 1975, GRM was integrated with the new Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA – Audiovisual National Institute) with Bayle as its head. In taking

12099-547: Was often skeptical of films primarily formal in their format. Epstein, in an interview: “‘In your opinion, do films fashioned according to the cubist or expressionist taste represent the quintessence of cinema?’ This time, my answer was even more categorical: ‘No, it is but an accessory of cinema and almost an ill-state for this accessory.’” In numerous instances and through various expressions, Epstein contrasts narration with an alternative system of representation more closely aligned with cinematic brilliance – what we might term

12210-598: Was possible to remove the familiarity of musical instrument sounds and abstract them further by techniques such as removing the attack of the recorded sound. He was among the first musicians to manipulate recorded sound for the purpose of using it in conjunction with other sounds in order to compose a musical piece. Techniques such as tape looping and tape splicing were used in his research, often comparing to sound collage . The advent of Schaeffer's manipulation of recorded sound became possible only with technologies that were developed after World War II had ended in Europe. His work

12321-476: Was viewed as the primary requirement; to enable complex synthesis processes such as frequency modulation , amplitude modulation , and modulation via an external source. No keyboard was attached to the synthesiser and instead a specific and somewhat complex envelope generator was used to shape sound. This synthesiser was well-adapted to the production of continuous and complex sounds using intermodulation techniques such as cross-synthesis and frequency modulation but

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