Musique concrète (French; literally, "concrete music"), is a style of avant-garde music that relies on natural environmental sounds and other non-inherently-musical noises to create music.
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Controversy
Much like electroacoustic music, musique concrète has been subject to conflicting perceptions about its character. The term is often understood as a practice of simply making music out of "real world" sounds, or sounds other than those made by musical instruments. Rather, it is a wider attempt to afford a new way of musical production and expression. Traditionally, classical or serious music begins as an abstraction, as musical notation on paper or other medium, which is then produced into audible music. Musique concrète strives to begin with the "concrete" sounds, experiment with them, and abstract them into musical compositions.
History
Musique Concrète was pioneered by Pierre Schaeffer in the late 1940s and 1950s, facilitated by developments in technology, most prominently microphones and the commercial availability of the magnetic tape recorder (created in 1939), used by Schaeffer and his colleagues for manipulating tapes and tape loops. From the contemporary point of view, the importance of Schaeffer's work with musique concrète can be summed in three points:
- 1) He developed the concept of including any and all sounds into the musical vocabulary. At first he concentrated on working with sounds other than those produced by traditional musical instruments, removing them from their original context. Later on, he found it 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.
- 2) He was among the first to manipulate recorded sound in the way that it could be used in conjunction with other such sounds in the making of a musical piece. This could be thought of as a precursor to contemporary sampling practices.
- 3) Furthermore, he emphasized the importance of play (in his terms, jeu) in 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 the core of musique concrète.
Schaeffer, a Paris radio broadcaster, experimented in a studio starting in 1948-1949. He created the "Research Group on Concrete Music" (Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète - GRMC) in 1951 when he established himself at the R.T.F., the ancestor of the ORTF public radiobroadcaster. Pierre Schaeffer began to use the classing of sounds to create what he called musical objects. Several composers, among whom were Pierre Boulez, Luc Ferrari, Karlheinz Stockhausen or Jean Barraqué, would pass by the GRMC for a few concrete studies. The "Group on Musical Research" (Groupe de Recherches Musicales - GRM) was then created in 1958 by Pierre Schaeffer, along with Luc Ferrari and François-Bernard Mâche. Thereafter, Schaeffer used this experience to redefine the notion of "acousmatic", a term borrowed to Pythagoras which means "perception of sounds of which we ignore the origin." In 1975, GRM was integrated into the Audiovisual National Institute (Institut national de l'audiovisuel - INA). Concrète was combined with other, synthesized forms of electronic music to create Edgard Varèse's "Poème électronique". "Poème" was played at the 1958 Brussels, Belgium World's Fair through 425 carefully-placed loudspeakers in a special pavilion designed by Iannis Xenakis. The fictitious 'twelve-tone composeress' Dame Hilda Tablet, created by Henry Reed, spoke of her creation of 'Musique concrète renforcée'.
Popular music forms, 1950s-1970s
After the 1950s Musique concrète was somewhat displaced by other forms of electronic composition, although its influence can be seen in popular music by several performers. In 1967 and 1968 musician Frank Zappa made several musique concrète pieces at Apostolic Studios in New York City. He named this electronic setup "The Apostolic Blurch Injector." The resulting sound, as heard on "The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny" from We're Only In It For The Money and "Dwarf Nebula Processional March & Dwarf Nebula" from Weasels Ripped My Flesh and parts of the albums Lumpy Gravy and Uncle Meat, is a series of bizarre, swirling buzzes, beeps and whooshes. The Beatles' song Tomorrow Never Knows (1966) made use of multiple tape loops and backward guitar. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! (1967) used a tape of Musique concrète sounds carefully mixed into the background. The most notable Beatles recording to use the technique was "Revolution 9" (1968.) Pink Floyd used it most notably in the finale of the song "Bike" (1967) and in the albums Ummagumma (1969), Atom Heart Mother (1970), The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and their abandoned Household Objects project (1972.) Roxy Music used it in the intro to their song "Re-Make/Re-Model" (1972.)
Recent popular music forms
Traditional and non-traditional Concrète experienced a revival in the 1980s and 1990s. Artists like Ray Buttigieg with his experimental series "Earth Noise" and "Sound Science Series" and John Oswald's Plunderphonics use found and intended sounds in old and cutting edge techniques, although modern sampling technology is now often used in place of magnetic tape. Recently, the growing popularity in all forms of electronic music has led to a re-birth of musique concrète. Artists such as Mira Calix, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Matmos, Christian Fennesz, Francisco López, Ernesto Rodrigues, Junkielover and Scanner use many Concrète techniques in their music, although the traditional tape-splicing methods are commonly not used, instead favouring digital means of creation. Music magazines such as The Wire regularly feature articles and reviews of musique concrète.
Bibliography
- Pierre Schaeffer, A la recherche d'une musique concrète ("The Search for a Concrete Music" - 1952)
Notable composers
- Michel Chion
- Delia Derbyshire
- Francis Dhomont
- Denis Dufour
- Halim El-Dabh
- Luc Ferrari
- Pierre Henry
- Negativland
- Nurse with Wound
- Bernard Parmegiani
- Steve Reich
- Pierre Schaeffer
- Edgard Varèse
- Iannis Xenakis
- Frank Zappa
See also
- Absolute music
- Acousmatic art
- Acousmatic music
- BBC Radiophonic Workshop
- Electroacoustic music
- Industrial music/Noise music
- San Francisco Tape Music Center
External links
- musique concrète at All Music Guide
- details of Frank Zappa's "Apostolic Blurch Injector" from engineer John Kilgore
- Musique concrète; John Cage
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| Musique concrète - Noise | |
| Other electronic dance music genres | Ambient - Breakbeat - Drum and bass - Electro - UK garage - Hardcore - House - Industrial - Synthpop - Techno - Trance - Triphop |
