Musique Concrete

What Is It?

• Musique Concrete is a genre of music that is created by manipulating recorded sounds

• Sounds are often derived from recordings of musical instruments, voices, nature, synthesizers, or ordinary objects

• Composers use concrete sounds for their abstract musical value, not for their context (a piece using the sound of a barking dog will not be about a barking dog. It will simply explore the sound of the barking dog itself.)

How It Began

• In the late 1940’s, musicians Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry were working for a French broadcasting station and began experimenting with changing the sounds they recorded

• Schaeffer coined the term musique concrete based on the idea that concrete sounds were the building blocks to create a piece of music

• Around the same time, Karheinz Stockhausen was experimenting with gramophones and tape recorders in Germany

How Did They Create It?• Schaeffer and Henry realized that recordings, first on 78rpm shellac disks, and later

on quarter-inch analogue tape, allowed them to do things they could not do before. They could speed sounds up; they could slow them down; they could make them louder or quieter; they could repeat a sound, cut pieces out of it, filter it… and then, they could do the whole lot again playing the sound backwards.

• So they could take concrete sounds; sounds from real life objects: the rattle of a saucepan lid, the rush and roar of a railway engine, a baby crying, the ring of a knife tapping a wine glass - they could use any sound from real life - and turn it into music.

• Once you had learned how to cut and edit tape using a razor blade; once you had the patience to sit for hours, recording, altering tape speed, re-recording, cutting, sorting, joining tiny pieces of tape to make your finished work; once you had wasted a few hours getting two [or three] mechanical tape recorders to start at the same time, you could get your music to sound something like you wanted.

See How It’s Done

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4ea0sBrw6M

Significant Composers/Works

• Pierre Schaeffer-Etudes de bruits• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTf0yE15zzI

• Pierre Henry-Le voile d’Orphee 1• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAxGbZgzuAU

• Schaeffer/Henry-Orphee 53 (opera)• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJq3jItducg

• Edgar Varese-Poeme electronique• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AR_od3KMb4