Concrete music

The concrete music is a music (also called Musique for band ) created in the Années 1950 in France by Pierre Schaeffer. This style will remain very French-speaking (France, Belgium, Canada).

One can see the premises of the concrete music at the Italian bruitists (like Russolo). The great difference which will exist at the beginning between the bruitism and the concrete music is the recording on support, initially on vinyl, then on tape, hard drive, DAT…

First of all, the recordings were done thanks to the discs vinyls. One to four people played with samples while another turntable engraved the Mixage first turntables. This process was very expensive: in time (it was necessary much to repeat to create a " orchestre" platinums) and of number of anybody. One by platinum, one which supervised the recording and one which directed l'" orchestre". The Magnétophone will revolutionize concrete creation because one can cut the band and stick ends of sound to the place, but also to back. This tool will make it possible to control the time of the composition but in parallel will prevent any interpretation because all is fixed on support.

It is after having listened to a disc striped vinyl that Pierre Schaeffer realized of the evolution of listening but also of the capacity of the ear to décontextualiser a sound. The term of " music concrète" to that " will be opposed; music abstraite" , music which would require the contest of a medium (as the partition) to carry out the musical idea of the type-setter whereas for the concrete music the type-setter works directly on the sound itself. Pierre Schaeffer makes public the first results of his research in 1952 in his work entitled In the search of a concrete music . This music then consists in for him recording sounds on a magnetic band then to assemble these " sonores" objects; so that they become " musicaux" objects;.

History

It is thanks to the arrival of the Magnétophone (1939) and of the magnetic band, then the generalization of the use of the magnetic processes in phonographic industry (1945), that holding them of the concrete music will be able to begin the exploration of the sound phenomenon. Its studio of test located at Paris will become the Group of Search for Concrete music (G.R.M.C.) in 1951, installed with the French Broadcasting-television (R.T.F.). Pierre Schaeffer will make use of the study and the classification of the sounds to build what it will name the musical objects. Several type-setters, among whom Pierre Boulez, Luc Ferrari, Karlheinz Stockhausen or Jean Barraqué, will pass to the G.R.M.C to carry out some concrete studies.

In 1958, after three years spent to the variation of the group, Pierre Schaeffer takes it in hand and sets up his administrative, esthetic and moral reorganization. The G.R.M.C becomes G.R.M.. Pierre Schaeffer wanted to pose the postulates of the research, which it named already “the musical experiment”.

He will define thanks to this experiment the concept of Acousmatique, word borrowed from Pythagore which means “perception of the sounds which one is unaware of the origin”. In 1948, Pierre Schaeffer composes his first work: five studies of noises . It will be created on the radio R.T.F on October 5th, 1948 in a " concert of bruits" presented by Jean Tuscany. This concert included/understood the following parts:

Disconcerting Study n° 1 or Study with the swivels ;
Study n° 2 Imposed or Study on the railroads ;
Study n° 3 Concerting or Study for orchestra ;
Made up Study n° 4 or Study with the piano ;
Pathetic Study n° 5 or Study with the pans .

Pierre Schaeffer will be joined a few months later in 1949 by Pierre Henry. With them two, they are in France the founders and the examples of this movement which during the every years 1950 will mark several generations. The Symphonie for a man alone (1950) will remain the most famous concert of their collaboration and the first philosopher's stone of concrete music. Several versions of work exist. The first which includes/understands 22 titles was created at the Teacher training school of Music on March 18th, 1950. A shorter version, 11 titles, was then given on May 27th, 1951. But it is the version ballet, created in collaboration with Maurice Béjart on July 31st 1955 with the Theater of the Fields-Elysées which gave to work its rententissement world.

One will find then the influences of this step in Electronic music and musical Informatique, and in other theorists of the music of the XXe century. Edgar Varèse (1950), was a large partisan of this research on the sound one and will use in its electronic Poème . At the Beatles and the Pink Floyd in the Sixties, and still recently, the taste of the artists for the electronic music affiliated to that of the concrete recordings gave a rebirth to the movement: Christian Fennesz and Francisco Lopez, for example, uses many techniques borrowed from the concrete music.

Today, in 2006, the work of composition of Michel Chion, which it still names very voluntarily " music concrète" , expressing by there its attachment with a musical genre always more than long-lived ( Requiem , the Temptation of Saint Antoine , Isle Sounding …), of François Bayle ( the acoustic experiment , Spinning top in the sky , the empty handed …), of Lionel Marchetti ( the large valley , In the Mountain (ki ken taï) , Adele and Hadrian (the book of the holidays) , Noord five atlantica …) or of Denis Dufour ( Bocalises , Our need for consolation is impossible to satisfy , Bazar bug , Chanson of the highest tower , Voice-over …) and of Pierre Henry, of course, just like the very poetic work of: Christian Zanési, Bernard Fort, Michele Bokanovski, David Aubrun, Marc Favre, Jean-Marc Duchenne, Francis Dhomont, Patrick Ascione… … is an good example of the unceasingly renewed strength of the concrete music, as well in type-setters of high maturity as at others, young people, which skilfully raise this art of the loudspeaker to the height of the ambitions of Pierre Schaeffer…

External bonds

audio Book (reading mp3) of the incipit of the book Modulations, a history of the electronic music
Of the studio of test of the rtf with the GRM: Musical theory of the sound object
the handbook of the acousmates junior: Simple handbook on the studio and its techniques, initially intended for the students in class of electroacoustic composition.

Random links: