What is Musique concrète:
Musique concrète utilizes recorded sounds as raw material, and therefore compositions in this style are not restricted to the typical rules of melody, harmony, rhythm, metre.
Montages, which piece together Musique concrète, involve sounds that are derived from samplings or recordings of musical instruments, voices, natural sounds, synthesizers and computer based signal processing and are created often by modifying the recordings through audio effects and tape manipulation.
In the early 1940's the French composer Pierre Schaeffer theorized the concept of Musique concrète as a compositional practice. One that was to contrast the pure elektronische Musik, or electronic music, that solely uses electronically produced sounds rather than recorded sounds. [Norton] "By 1949 Schaeffer's compositional work 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 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 a manner of composing, indeed, a new mental framework of composing." [Wikipedia]
Schaeffer however was not the first to imagine sound recordings or tape music. In fact as early as 1928 people were considering the possibility of music being specifically composed for the gramophone or phonographic disks. In 1936 German art theorist, Rudolf Arnheim discussed the effects of microphone recording in his essay "Radio" and stated that the recordings could be used as a creative medium. "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." [Wikipedia]
To that end even before Schaffer began to actually conduct preliminary experiments into sound manipulation we see that the Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh was experimenting with tape music also known as electroacoustic music, with a wire recorder. Using the sounds of an ancient zaar ceremony he processed these recordings at the Middle East Radio studio using reverberation, voltage controls, re-recording and echoes which resulted in "The Expression of Zaar" in 1944.
Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry and Jacques Poullin had received official recognition by the year 1951 and so The Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète, Club d 'Essai de la Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française was established at RTF in Paris. This group established the first purpose-built electroacoustic music studio which would attract many up and coming composers including Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varèse, Iannis Xenakis, and Olivier Messiaen. Philippe Arthuys would later be given responsibility for the GRMC and Pierre Henry operating as the Director of Works as Schaeffer's commitments lead him to have extended absences from the studios. This led to a time of great musical development but as Schaffer returned in 1957 he was vocal regarding his disapproval of the direction of the GRMC. "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" [Wikipedia]
This time of change caused Henry, Arthuys and several of their colleagues to resign in April 1958 and Schaeffer to create a new collective called the Groupe de Recherches Musicales or GRM. It was one of several theoretical and experimental groups working under the umbrella of the Schaeffer-led Service de la Recherche at ORTF. Other groups were 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 their joint focus and they did research into audiovisual communication and mass media, audible phenomena and music in general. Furthermore they continued to refine Schaeffer's ideas and strengthened the aforementioned contrasting concept of musique acousmatique. The term acousmatic was borrowed from ancient Ionian Greek philosopher Pythagoras of Samos and was defined as "Acousmatic, adjective: referring to a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it." [Wikipedia]
"Why should a civilization which so misuses its power have, or deserve, a normal music?" - Pierre Schaeffer
About Dr. Michael T. Brown:
"Dr. Michael T. Brown has, over more years than he cares to admit, explored many aspects of music, including (but not limited to) operatic performance, folk music, DIY recording, teaching, conducting, and composition. As a composer, he was a member of the Gordon College Composers Guild during his undergraduate years and had the privilege of learning from Carol Barnett and Robert Bradshaw. His more "standard" compositions and arrangements have included a number of choral works and a Charles Ives-inspired symphonic band arrangement of the hymn "I'll fly away." During his tenure at the French International School in Bethesda, MD, he wrote a series of experimental works for the ninth grade to perform at the end of an annual end-of-year evening of new music. "
"Canon for Auto-tuned Teakettles":
Who was Pierre Schaeffer:
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician who lived from 1910-1995. His focus after World War II was on communications, acoustics, the various arts of music, literature, and radio presentation as well as anti-nuclear activism and cultural criticism. Although he is now known as one of the most influential experimental, electroacoustic and electronic musicians whose techniques in recording and sampling is used worldwide by nearly all record production companies he was discouraged from going into a career in music. [Factmag]
At the insistence of his parents he originally studied engineering and received diplomas in radio broadcasting from École Polytechnique and École nationale supérieure des télécommunications. In 1934 he put this education to good use working briefly in telecommunications in Strasbourg. A year later he would meet his future wife Elisabeth Schmitt and have a child together. He then began working at Radiodiffusion Française in radiobroadcasting and presentation but would move away from this to pursue music instead. This time was not poorly spent as Schaeffer would experiment with records and other assorted devices and their sounds. It began with playing sounds backwards, slowing them down, speeding them up and juxtaposing them with other sounds. Overtime the work became more avant-garde and Schaffer challenged traditional music style with various devices and practices such as new instruments he and his colleagues created like chromatic, sliding and universal phonogenes and the acousmonium. [Norton]
Schaeffer's later years were not without excitement, after his time at the aforementioned GRMC he founded traditional music label Ocra alongside Charles Duvelle, who was a composer, pianist and musicologist. Its goal was to preserve African rural soundscapes and train technicians in African national broadcasting services. From 1968-1980 Schaeffer worked as an associate professor at the Paris Conservatoire after creating a "class of fundamental music and application to the audiovisual." [Wikipedia] He led a 498-member French rescue team to look for survivors in Leninakan at the age of 78, and he would stay there working tirelessly until all foreign personnel were asked to leave.
"Schaeffer suffered from Alzheimer's disease later in his life, [sic] and died from the condition in Aix-en-Provence in 1995.Schaeffer was thereafter remembered by many of his colleagues with the title, "Musician of Sounds"" [Wikipedia]
"Apostrophe":
"Symphonie pour un homme seul" or Symphony for One Man Alone by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henri from 1949-1950 is described by the composer as "an opera for blind people, a performance without argument, a poem made of noises, bursts of text, spoken or musical." [Wikipedia] Originally, the work had 22 movements using turntables and mixers, but after technical issues arose it was cut down to 11 movements and later revised to include 12.
The movements are as follow;
Prosopopée I
Partita
Valse
Erotica
Scherzo
Collectif
Prosopopée II
Eroïca
Apostrophe
Intermezzo
Cadence
Strette
The 9th movement "Apostrophe", shared below, is a fascinating study into musique concrète.
"Pierre Schaeffer’s Apostrophe is an exceptional example of Musique Concrete. There is a certain musicality that is lacking in his first piece 'Etude Aux Chemins de Fer' that brings up emotions for readers along with being created by the 'found sounds' that are necessary for any musique concrete piece," states a 2013 blog titled Computing and the Arts written by University of Arizona student Sonia Sen. Her words showcase how valuable the piece is and how the work of Schaeffer has survived all these years in the cannon of academic study.
Citations:
Wikipedia:
Musique concrète : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concr%C3%A8te
Pierre Schaeffer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Schaeffer
FactMag:
"A Guide to Pierre Schaeffer..." https://www.factmag.com/2016/02/23/pierre-schaeffer-guide/
Computing and the Arts:
Pierre Schaeffer: https://ssen10.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/pierre-schaeffer-apostrophe/
Norton A History of Western Music Ninth Edition: P. 946-953
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