Musique concrète

A composition practice that builds music from recorded sounds, transforming and arranging them rather than beginning with conventional instrumental notation.

Sound object: A bounded sound treated as a unit for listening and composition, independent of its source. Pierre Schaeffer’s term names the recorded fragment that can be selected and shaped as musical material.
Pierre Schaeffer: A French composer and engineer who founded musique concrète and developed its early theory. His studio experiments and writings established the practice’s distinctive approach to recorded sound.
Pierre Henry: A French composer who worked with Pierre Schaeffer and became a major figure in musique concrète. His compositions brought forceful rhythmic and dramatic forms to the studio practice.
Sound design: The creation and organization of sound for media, performance, or other environments. Musique concrète’s studio methods offer ways to construct expressive sound beyond conventional instruments.
Acousmatic music: Loudspeaker music composed for listening without a visible sound-producing source. It shares musique concrète’s emphasis on recorded sound but names a presentation and listening tradition.
Phonography: The capture and preservation of sound as a recording. Recording makes sounds available for repeated listening, selection, and arrangement.
Club d'Essai: A French radio research and production studio founded in Paris in 1946. Schaeffer developed his early sound experiments within this radio studio.
Éliane Radigue: A French composer known for slowly evolving electronic and electroacoustic works. Her early studio work connected musique concrète techniques with sustained, gradual sound change.
Film sound: The recorded, edited, and mixed sound elements used in motion pictures. Concrete techniques can transform effects and environmental recordings into composed film sound.
Serialism: A compositional method that organizes musical parameters through ordered series. Serial composition typically begins with abstract musical structures rather than recorded sound fragments.

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