Musique concrète
Musique concrète is a type of music composition that utilizes recorded sounds as raw material. Sounds are often modified through the application of audio signal processing and tape music techniques, and may be assembled into a form of sound collage. It can feature sounds derived from recordings of musical instruments, the human voice, and the natural environment, as well as those created using sound synthesis and computer-based digital signal processing. Compositions in this idiom are not restricted to the normal musical rules of melody, harmony, rhythm, and metre. The technique exploits acousmatic sound, such that sound identities can often be intentionally obscured or appear unconnected to their source cause.
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. By the early 1950s, musique concrète was contrasted with "pure" elektronische Musik as then developed in West Germany – based solely on 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, which attracted important figures including Pierre Henry, Luc Ferrari, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varèse, and Iannis Xenakis. From the late 1960s onward, and particularly in France, the term acousmatic music was used in reference to fixed media compositions that utilized both musique concrète-based techniques and live sound spatialisation.
History
Beginnings
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 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 a way that will be peculiar to the gramophone record". The following year, in 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 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 Wochenende , 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 a sound collage in the film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, during the first transformation scene, as "pre-musique concrète". Ottorino Respighi's Pines of Rome calls for a phonograph recording of birdsong to be played during the third movement.
Pierre Schaeffer and
In 1942, French composer and theoretician Pierre Schaeffer began his exploration of radiophony when he joined Jacques Copeau and his pupils in 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 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 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 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 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".
Halim El-Dabh
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 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 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.Club d'Essai and ''Cinq études de bruits''
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 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 including Étude violette and Étude aux chemins de fer – were presented.Musique concrète
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". 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 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 a musical instrument'. During this early development of music concrete, Schaeffer continued participation in his Club d’Essai. Prior to their collaboration on Timbres-Durées, Schaeffer’s acquaintance and serialist composer, Olivier Messiaen, periodically participated in broadcasts, round tables, and critiques surrounding musique concrète.Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète
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 and Étude II by Boulez, Timbres-durées by Messiaen, Étude aux mille collants by Stockhausen, Le microphone bien tempéré and La voile d'Orphée by Henry, Étude I by Philippot, Étude by Barraqué, the mixed pieces Toute la lyre and Orphée 53 by Schaeffer/Henry, and the film music Masquerage by Schaeffer and Astrologie 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 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 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".