1 PIERRE SCHAEFFER, MUSIQUE CONCRETE, AND THE INFLUENCES IN THE COMPOSITIONAL PRACTICE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Carlos Guedes, 1996

1. Biography of Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995)1 Pierre Schaeffer was born in Nancy, France, in August 14, 1910. Known as the father of Musique Concrte, he was a composer, philosopher, musicologist, writer and sound engineer. After leaving the cole Polytechnique in 1934, Schaeffer joined the French radiodiffusion (RTF) as a broadcast engineer. In 1942, he joined Jacques Copeau and his pupils in the foundation of the Studio dEssai de la Radiodiffusion Nationale, which became a center of the Resistance movement in French radio. In August 1944 he was responsible, for the first broadcasts in liberated Paris. The Studio dEssai was renamed Club dEssai de la Radiodiffusion Tlvision Franaise in 1946. It is in this studio that he starts, two years later, experimenting with noises by recording sounds in locked groove disks, creating what it became known as musique concrte. Cinq tudes de bruits, the first piece known as musique concrte is broadcasted on the French radio on October 5, 1948. In 1949 he was joined by Pierre Henry at the Club dEssai, and together they composed Symphonie pour un homme seul (1949-50) which was going to be known as the first classic of the genre. In March 18, 1950, musique concrte had its first presentation in a public concert at the cole Normale de Musique in Paris with pieces by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. In 1951, together with Pierre Henry and Jacques Poullin, Schaeffer creates the Centre de Recherche de Musique Concrte de la Radioffusion-Tlvision
1 Some parts of the biography of Pierre Schaeffer were translated from Franois Bayle, ed., Pierre

Schaeffer: Luvre musicale Textes et documents indits runis par Franois Bayle (Paris: INAGRM, 1990) 115-118

2 Franaise which became later known as Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in 1958. The GRM was created to promote a collective research around the aims of its creator: definition of an experimental solfge of the universe of sound, based on listening and questioning the value of sound in the parameters that had been observed until then. In 1960 Pierre Schaeffer, claiming that music needed more researchers than authors, quits composing and dedicates himself exclusively to research in sound which leads to the publication, in 1966, of the Trait des objets musicaux. He eventually returned to the studio in 1975 to compose a piece using electronic sounds (which he used for the first time) with the assistance of Bernard Durr. Also in 1966, Schaeffer leaves the direction of the GRM to Franois Bayle and joins the Research Services of the ORTF, which he was one of the founders in 1960. In 1968 he starts teaching at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique in Paris a seminar in experimental music in the context of the work developed at the GRM. After 1966, Schaeffer extended his Trait and studies in sound through a vast number of conferences and publications. Pierre Schaeffer died in August 19, 1995, in Paris, France. The production of Pierre Schaeffer was very limited in number, consisting exclusively of electroacoustic music and knew three phases:

1 - The Primitives Cinq tudes de bruits (1948) La flte mexicaine (1949) Suite 14 (1949) LOiseau RAI (1950) tude de bruits was the first piece of musique concrte and was broadcasted in 1948 La flte and Loiseau are little unpretentious pieces (pices de genre) and

3 Suite 14 is an attempt of the reintegration of the traditional music (notated music, using instruments and notes) with the new music (musique concrte).

2- The collaborations with Pierre Henry Symphonie pour un homme seul (1949-50) Bidule en ut (1950) Orphe 51 (1951-53, an opera of musique concrte with the libretto written by Pierre Schaeffer). Orphe was a scandal in Donaueschingen as it was considered a crime anti-avant-garde.

3- The Etudes tude aux allures (1958) tude aux sons animes (1958) tude aux objets (1959) The Etude aux objets uses a very limited number of sound objects. Its influence was enormous in a great number of composers of electroacoustic music. Two other pieces were composed after the three periods mentioned above: Le tidre fertile (1975), the only piece he composed using electronic-generated sounds and Bilude (1979).

2. Historical Background The origins of the concepts of musique concrte can be traced back to the dawn of the twentieth century. Its consolidation as a different new genre is a consequence of two factors: the first one, was an increasing concern with the role of timbre and sound in music that led to a more frequent use of non-pitched instruments (notably percussion instruments), the invention of new instruments, and the development of techniques to extend the timbral possibilities of the existing instruments. The second factor was the technological development that brought the wire recorder, a device that allowed external sounds to be recorded on disks (used by Schaeffer in 1948), and the tape recorder (ca.1950).

4 The important role of Pierre Schaeffer in the creation and development of this genre, is directly related to his ideological motivations in creating a musical genre that was completely liberated from German/Austrian elements. As he once stated in an interview: (...) After the war, in the 45 to 48 period, we had driven back the German invasion but we hadnt driven back the invasion of Austrian music, 12-tone music. (...) I was involved in music; I was working with turntables (then with tape recorders); I was horrified by modern 12-tone music. I said to myself, Maybe I can find something different...maybe salvation, liberation is possible.Seeing that no-one knew what to do anymore with DoReMi, maybe we had to look outside that(...)2 I will focus later on the more-than-important contributions that this composer made in the development of this genre that influenced to an enormous extent the music composed after 1945. First, I will survey the most relevant facts and persons that in the first half of this century were direct or indirectly related to the emergence of Musique Concrte.

2.1. Luigi Russolo and the Futurists The Italian Futurist movement may seem an unexpected starting point for a history of post-war music. Yet it was in Milan, between 1909 and 1914, and in the midst of the cultural upheaval initiated by Marinetti, Boccioni, Balla and Severini that a radically new music was initiated: a music composed primarily of timbres rather than of conventional harmonies, melodies or rhythms.3 The Futurist aesthetic glorified machinery, noise and speed, and advocated the destruction of classical monuments, including the flooding of museums and libraries as an extremely aggressive posture against conservatism in art. Luigi Russolo (1885-1947), a Futurist composer/painter and instrument designer, was one of the most prominent figures of the Futurist movement. In his book Arte dei Rumori (1913), he called for a methodical investigation of the different categories of noise, ranging from bangs, thunderclaps and explosions to
2 Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Schaeffer Interview, Interview with Tim Hodgkinson, trans. Tim

Hodgkinson (1987), n. pag., Online, World Wide Web, 15 June 1996. 3 Roger Sutherland, New Perspectives in Music (London: Sun Tavern Fields, 1994) 7

5 buzzing, crackling and friction sounds. He complained about the lack of timbral variety of the orchestras of that period, and envisioned new instruments capable of emulating the infinite variety of sounds to be heard in nature and industrial technology. He saw the destruction of the harmonic system as an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary development, and regarded the growing complexity of polyphony, harmony and timbre in nineteenth century music as the forerunner of musical noise4 . Russolo eventually designed new instruments, the Intonarumori, in collaboration with the percussionist Ugo Piatti that were able produce an entirely new palette of sounds that included sounds of the nature such as the sound of the wind or croaking of frogs and industrial sounds (the drone of engines, sounds of sirens) writing several pieces for these instruments. Russolo was also the first composer to explore sounds of extremely long duration with a dense and slowing change in harmonic spectrum.

2.2. The Search for New Sound Sources The first electronic instruments were in development as early as the 1900s. The Telharmonium devised by Thaddeus Cahill around the turn of the century was housed in 1906 in the Telharmonic Hall in New York City5 . From 1920 to 1940, experiments with electronic instruments began to take place by some composers leading to the development of several electronic instruments. Two of the most popular of these new electronic instruments were the Theremin and the Ondes Martenot. The Theremin, created in 1923 by Leon Theremin was performed by moving ones hands in its vicinity, allowing to create pitches and glissandi between pitches. The Ondes Martenot devised by Maurice Martenot around 1928, looked like a clavichord and it followed the same basic principles of the Theremin. The pitch was controlled by a lateral movement of the finger ring attached to a metal ribbon. Many composers, such as Messiaen, Varse,
4 Sutherland 8 5 David Cope, New Directions in Music, 5th. ed. (Dubuque, IA: WM. C. Brown

Publishers,1989) 211

6 Milhaud and Honegger have effectively used the Ondes Martenot in their works6 . The percussion instruments family was fairly enlarged in its use by the orchestra at the beginning of this century. It was also during the first half of this century that pieces were composed exclusively for percussion: Edgard Varse in such pieces as Ionisation (1931) and John Cage in First construction in Metal (1939) had already exploited the percussion ensemble and show how fascinating music could be when written without reliance on pitched sounds and the harmonies that go with them.7 Edgard Varse also did a classification of the timbres of the percussion instruments used to play Ionisation. He classified them in two families: The nontempered family which embodied the Woods, Drums and Metals and the ambiguous temperament family (the tubular bells , the cowbells and Timpani)8 . The search for new timbres in the ordinary instruments also increased in the pre-Second War period. Regarding the string instruments, Brindle mentions that before 1945 (...) Bartk and Webern had already explored [string instruments] resources so thoroughly that there has seemed little else to discover9 . In the keyboard instruments, its extended techniques started being exploited since the mid1920s Cowell was using techniques such as plucking and striking strings inside the piano in his piece The Banshee (1925), and Cage invented the prepared piano in the 1930s.

2.3. Edgard Varse (1883-1965) Edgard Varse was a sort of a visionary of musique concrte, or at least, of the music produced by electronic means, foreseeing the advantages that this medium could bring to music making. As early as 1916 Varse argued that music could only advance with the use of electrical technology. In 1936 he said I am sure that the time will come when the composer after he has graphically realized his
6 Cope 215 7 Reginald Smith Brindle, The New Music: The Avant-Garde Since 1945, 2nd ed. (New York:

Oxford UP, 1987) 6 8 Pierre Schaeffer, La musique concrte, Que Sais-je?, 2nd ed. (Paris: PUF, 1973) 63 9 Brindle 155

7 score, will see this score automatically put on a machine that will faithfully transmit the musical content to the listener(...)10 . He also made a series of unsuccessful attempts to obtain financial support for a laboratory of musical research. The frustrations concerning the physical limitations of his time eventually led Varse to abandon musical composition for almost two decades. After this period Varse composed Dserts (1954) and Pome Electronique (1958), both employing electronic media. Dserts was a piece for orchestra and tape and Pome Electronique was for tape only and it was one of the first pieces done in multichannel stereo. Varses peculiar musical characteristics, his choice for the instruments to use as well their employment were rather innovative at his time. Having a special preference for louder instruments (Brass and Percussion), Varse developed techniques on his orchestral music that prefigured those used in electroacoustic music.11 Effects like timbral shifts in a single note, or complex attacks created by pitched and non-pitched instruments simultaneously were used, as well as a very special concern with dynamics that could be compared to the techniques of amplitude envelope shaping in electroacoustic music. He also used effects in the brass section such as rapid crescendos with accentuations in the end (sforzandi), creating a similar effect that is obtained on tape by playing backwards a sound with a strong attack. He was also concerned with the use of instruments as components of sound masses of varying color and density. This is analogous to the use in electroacoustic music of superimposition to create complex timbres12 . Varse was one of the first composers to theorize the concept of organized sound, that served as the basis for electronic music and musique concrte.13

2.4. John Cage (1912-1992)

10 Qtd. in Cope 215-16 11 Schaeffer, Musique concrte 63 12 Sutherland 39 13 However, Sutherland mentions that [a]ltough it was Varse who coined the phrase organized

sound, the concept was already elaborated by Russolo in both theory and practice (13)

8 I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electronic instruments ... (1937)14 Cages second period, in the mid-to-late 1930s, was characterized by a concentration on wide varieties of timbral resources and the aesthetics of noise. This is the period of the First Construction (in Metal), 1939, and of the first piece for prepared piano (Bachanale, 1938). Cage was also one of the first composers that experiment with turntables15 . According to David Cope, [Cages works from this period] are all characteristic of Cages imaginative leap into new sonic realms16 .

2.5. Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) Olivier Messiaen is acknowledged by Pierre Schaeffer as being one of the composers who first called to the attention of listening to the sounds of nature, as a means of finding new ways of expression for the music of this century. Schaeffer considered the attitude of Messiaen similar to that of the musique concrte even though they had different technical approaches17 .

3.Musique Concrte and Electronic Music: Two Revolutionary Events of Opposite Signs In the span of two years, two revolutionary events, that one could classify of opposite signs, were produced inside the studios of radio broadcast 18 These events of opposite signs were the musique concrte created by Schaeffer in Paris at the RTF studio in 1948, and the electronic music created at the NWDR in Germany in 1950 by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Herbert Eimert. Musique concrte envisioned a different type of musical approach utilizing
14 John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown CT: Wesleyan UP, 1961) 15 Imaginary Landscape No.1, 1939 16 Cope 173 17 The aim of Messiaen was to express the sounds of the nature through the traditional

instruments, while musique concrte utilized recordings the sounds of nature. (Schaeffer, Musique concrte 65). 18 Schaeffer, Musique concrte 10

9 exclusively the sounds from the environment. The electronic music consisted in the use of sounds generated by electroacoustic means recorded on tape, and envisioned a greater control over the sound parameters (pitch, timbre, dynamics and duration) in order to overcome the difficulties that the increasing complexity in written music presented to the performers. Thus, while electronic music considered itself as an extension of the traditional music, having straight connections with it, musique concrte envisioned a completely different approach to music composition.

4. Pierre Schaeffer and Musique Concrte Pierre Schaeffer was a radio engineer working at the French Radio by the time the wire turntable was invented. He had also come from a family of musicians and had a musical training. As mentioned above, he had strong ideological motivations that compelled him to start doing experiments with noises to create a music that was completely different. Musique concrte is music composed or constructed exclusively utilizing recordings of preexisting sounds, either musical sounds or noises19 . To Schaeffer, the fact of creating a new music that consisted in the use of sound per se, meant a return to the sources necessary for the evolution of the musical language as it would certainly provide new insights on the comprehension of sound20 . The term musique concrte, created by Schaeffer, became publicly known in 1949 in an article that he wrote for the periodical Polyphonie21 as consequence of the interest generated by the broadcast of the Cinq tudes de bruits in 1948. More than the simple use of recorded sounds as the musical material, musique concrte represents, according to Schaeffer, an inversion of the processes used in the traditional musical approach. In traditional music, which Schaeffer calls abstract music, the composer follows a path from the abstract to the concrete. Its phases comprise: (1) mental
19 Schaeffer called musical sounds to the sound produced by musical instruments and noises to

the sounds of the environment 20 Schaeffer, Musique concrte 17 21 Schaeffer, Introduction la musique concrte Polyphonie 6.La musique mecanise (1949): 3052

10 conception (abstract); (2) notation; (3) instrumental performance (concrete). In musique concrte (the new music) the composer follows a path from the concrete to the abstract. Since the sound material is already preexistent, one can do no better than chose and manipulate the material creating musical objects. Subsequently, one experiments with the created objects and finally puts them together as a compositional aim that emerges from the experimentation with these materials. These techniques do not need the help (as it becomes useless) of traditional notation. Schaeffer didnt see these two approaches as being incompatible. He rather saw them as being complementary and envisioned that in the future an exchanging movement could be produced between the traditional and modern approaches22 :

1 abstract music 2 Fig.1. The cycle of exchange between traditional music and musique concrte as envisioned by Schaeffer musique concrte

The importance in the creation of this cycle of exchange would cause the traditional musical notions to be renewed, leading the concept of musical note to evolve to the concept of musical object.23 The contributions the father of musique concrte gave to the development of the genre are extremely important and may have no parallel in music history. In contrast to the small musical output of Pierre Schaeffer, the amount of written documents he left that range from the journals he wrote since the moment he started experimenting with noises in 1948, to the definition and refining of concepts pertaining musique concrte (1952, 1966 and afterwards), electroacoustic music, and music in general, including the definition of the methodology for musique
22 Schaeffer, Introduction la musique concrte 51. See also Schaeffer, A la Recherche dune

musique concrte (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1952) 35 and La musique concrte 15-17 23 Schaeffer, La musique concrte 63

11 concrte are of unquestionable value and had been of great influence to a considerable amount of composers including myself. Schaeffer considered himself as being more of a good researcher than of a good composer.24 This posture might have led him, from the very beginning, to start documenting the research he was doing with noises by keeping a research log of the progresses and difficulties he encountered. These research journals were also fertile in speculations about the function of sound in music, the notion of musical instrument, the notion of sound object, new approaches to listening, the relationship between the listener and electroacoustic music, the approach to composition through musique concrte, and finally, a solfge of musique concrte.

5. Fundamental Concepts In this section I will present the fundamental concepts and methodology defined by Pierre Schaeffer for the approach to musique concrte.

5.1. The Sound Object To Schaeffer, sound object is any sonic event that is heard through a perceptive effort that detaches the event from the source that produces it, and from a context other than the sound per se: The sound object must be distinguished from the sound body or from the device that creates it.25 (...) The sound object exists once I accomplished a reduction (...) more accurate than the acousmatic reduction: I retain, not only, to the pieces of information provided by my ear (...) but these pieces of information dont concern to anything else than to the sound itself (...)26 This perceptive effort that disengages the sound from its cause or context is called reduced listening. 27 The qualities of the sound objects that emerge from the reduced listening were first
24 Schaeffer, Pierre Schaeffer Interview 25 Schaeffer, La musique concrte 36 26 Schaeffer, Trait des objets musicaux (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1966) 268 27 Schaeffer, Trait 270-72

12 pointed out in the first journal of musique concrte28 , when Pierre Schaeffer reported his first research with noises that preceded the Concert de bruits:

To distinguish an element (to hear it in itself, for the sake of its texture, its matter, its color). To repeat it. Repeat the same sonic fragment: there is not an event any more, there is music.29 Schaeffer also analyzed extensively the act of listening as a perceptual quality, distinguishing several levels of listening in his Trait des objets musicaux30 .

5.2. The Musical Object For Schaeffer, musical objects are sound objects that bear musical value. This rather complex notion arose to Schaeffer by realizing that the sounds of the environment could be classified and compared by the same parameters (i.e. duration, pitch and timbre) of the musical sounds.

5.3. Distinction between Sound Object and Musical Object The musical object is a type of sound object. The musical object, is perceived through a musical listening, which specializes the reduced listening and aims to put the object in a musical context. It is through this type of listening that one is able to choose the acceptable objects. 31 The acceptable objects should then observe certain criteria32 : Be simple, original, memorizable and have a suitable duration (i.e. they shouldnt be either too short or too long); therefore they should be balanced
28 Schaeffer, Recherche 11-76 29 Schaeffer, Recherche 11-76. Trans. by Carlos Palombini in Machine Songs V: Pierre

Schaeffer From Research Into Noises to Experimental Music, Computer Music Journal. 17:3 (1993) 15 30 Schaeffer, Trait 112-128 31 Schaeffer, Trait 348 32 Translated from Michel Chion, Guide des objets sonores Pierre Schaeffer et la recherche musicale (Paris: INA-GRM, Buchet-Chastel, 1983) 97-98

13 in a typological sense.33 They should yield easily to the reduced listening by not being too anecdotal or imbued of a strong affective meaning. They should be susceptible of being combined with other similar sound objects, in order to provide a predominant and identifiable emergence of a musical value. It is also possible to have a set of acceptable objects that are only acceptable as a group, should they provide the existence of a musical value34 .

5.4. Objects and Structures Schaeffer acknowledged that the sound objects possessed Gestalt qualities. Thus, a sound object constitutes a structure itself composed by other sound objects at more elementary levels, or a sound object could be considered as being part of a composed structure (other objects at a higher level of complexity).35

5.5. Acousmatic(s) Acousmatic is an ancient word derived from the Greek, meaning a sound that one listens without seeing where it is produced. Pythagoras designated by acousmatic the situation of lecturing behind a curtain in the absolute darkness and silence as it would enhance his disciples focus on the lectures.36 This word was applied by Schaeffer to address the present days experience of listening to sounds whose sources are not visible (the sounds that we listen on the telephone, radio, cassette player, etc.). In 1974, Franois Bayle designated by acousmatic music the music that is developed in a studio with the purpose of being projected in a room like a movie37 .
33 Typology is an operation of identification and classification of the sound objects, and was the

first stage of Schaeffers program for musical research that envisioned a thorough classification of all the sound objects. 34 Chion 97 35 Schaeffer, La musique concrte 37. See also Schaeffer, Trait 272-78 36 Franois Bayle Musique Acousmatique: Propositions...Positions (Paris: INA, Editions BuchetChastel, 1993) 180 37 Bayle, Musique acousmatique 181

14 Acousmatic listening is opposed to direct listening. In direct listening, the sources that produce the sound are visible. Michel Chion says that, according to Schaeffer, the acousmatic situation renovates the act of listening, by isolating sound from the audiovisual environment favoring the reduced listening, which leads to the perception of the sound object38 . The acousmatic situation changes the way of listening and causes certain characteristic perceptual effects to happen39 : a) The suppression of the support given by vision in order to identify the sound sources. We find that most of what we believe to listen to is, in fact, seen and explained by the context40 b) The dissociation between visual and aural perception as a means of better perceiving the sound objects. The sound object as a perception of the sound per se41 c) To put in evidence, through repeated listenings of the same sonic fragment, the various aspects of that sonic fragment.

5.5.1. The Acousmatic Experience To Schaeffer the acousmatic experience leads to a new stage of aural perception as it provides the path to the musical object, and the tape recorder plays the role of the Pythagoras curtain in sound research, as it creates new phenomena to be analyzed and new ways of observation.

5.6. The Postulates of Experimental Music Between 1951 and 1953, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen were among the composers invited to work at the studio of the Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrte. A serial tendency then started to develop within Groupe de Recherches, fact that caused some displeasure to Schaeffer as he
38 Chion 18 39 Transl. from Chion 18-19 40 Schaeffer, qtd. in Chion 18 41 Schaeffer, qtd. in Chion 19

15 saw no point in applying the serial method to concrete material: the complexity of concrete sounds could in itself efface tonal relations. 42 Musique concrte had been assimilated by electronic music in Darmstadt and the Groupe de Recherches organized the First Decade of Experimental Music in Paris, 1953, as an attempt to bridge the gap between the two opposing tendencies in the approach to the music produced by electroacoustic means, trying to put musique concrte, the German electronic music, and the American tape music, under the banner of Experimental Music43 . This workshop led to Vers une musique experimentale, an article written by Schaeffer in 1953, only published in 1957 in the Revue Musicale, where he defines the postulates of experimental music, which according to him, had a concrete inspiration44 : First postulate: supremacy of the ear. The potential for evolution and the limits of the new music have to rely on the resources of the ear. Second postulate: preference for the real acoustic sources, the ones that our ears are accostumed for a long time, and a refuse to use exclusively electronicgenerated sounds Third postulate: research of a language. The new musical structures must assure a communication between the composer and the audience. According to Schaeffer, these postulates are valid as any attempt to renovate the musical domain, despite the techniques used to achieve it. As a practical conclusion of these postulates, he also defined a research method after musique concrte consisting of five rules: First rule: To learn a new solfge through the systematic listening of sound objects of any kind. Second rule: To create diverse and original sound objects as opposed to writing using the traditional music notation. Third rule: To learn how to shape the musical objects utilizing the sound42 Palombini 18 43 Palombini 18. See also Schaeffer, Musique concrte 28-30 44 Schaeffer, Vers une Musique Experimentale, 1953, La Revue Musicale 236 (1957): 11-27.

See also Musique concrte 28-30

16 manipulating devices, i.e., tape recorders, microphones, filters, etc. Fourth rule: Before conceiving a piece, one should compose etudes, like the school exercises of the traditional music, for they will constrain the debutant to the choice of the better resources at disposal. Moreover, they will help to find the possible combinations of the sonic material towards the final composition. Fifth rule: To allow the experience and time to perform the true assimilation of these procedures. In the year that succeeded the publication of Vers une musique experimentale (1958), Schaeffer withdrew the term musique concrte and the Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrte changed its name to Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM).45

6. The Influence of Pierre Schaeffer Pierre Schaeffer was one of the forerunners of the music produced by electronic means and, being at the same time a composer, researcher, and philosopher/aesthetician, his legacy his music, and especially his several theoretical writings were of great influence in the course of the music of the post-war period. Musique concrte is perhaps the most important aspect of the nowadays-called electroacoustic music, which blends both electronic music and musique concrte, since it calls for a radically different approach to music composition. Masterpieces of electroacoustic music such as Simphonie pour un homme seul (by P. Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, 1949-50), Timbres-Dures (Olivier Messiaen, 1952), Gesange der Jnglinge (Stockhausen, 1956), Ommagio a Joyce (Luciano Berio, 1958), Etude aux objets (Schaeffer, 1958), Dserts (Edgard Varse, 1959), Variations pour une porte et un soupir (Pierre Henry, 1963), were directly or indirectly influenced by the concepts of Schaeffer and musique concrte. Some of these pieces were even created at the studios of the GRM in Paris. The Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrte, founded in 1951 by Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, and Jacques Poullin, renamed Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in 1958, was the first studio dedicated exclusively to
45 Palombini 19

17 electroacoustic music production. Most of the great European composers of the post-war period such as Pierre Henry, Messiaen, Boulez, Xenakis and Stockhausen, worked in these studios producing electroacoustic music pieces, and did research utilizing the studios resources. The GRM has also promoted, since its foundation, workshops on the techniques of electroacoustic music, and helped creating courses of electroacoustic music at the Conservatoire de Paris (1969) and Conservatoire de Lyon (1980). Franois Bayle (b.1932), who is now the director of the GRM, abandoned Messiaens class to follow the workshops at the GRM, and quits, after two years, studying with Stockhausen in order to study with Schaeffer.46 Bayle is perhaps the first composer who is a genuine product of the GRM and Schaeffers concepts. Other important composers who followed the GRM workshops and did research at the studios helped consolidating what became known as the School of Paris: Luc Ferrari (b. 1929), Franois Bernard-Mche (b. 1935), Bernard Parmegiani (b. 1927), and Guy Reibel (b.1936) . This research group has a very peculiar characteristic that is kept since its foundation: the composers who are invited to work with the group, develop their research or pieces in collaboration with technicians and through discussions with other composers working there. The research results and music compositions emerge from this interaction created within the group.47 The GRM is still today one of the most important research groups worldwide, devoted exclusively to the electroacoustic music production and research. In their facilities still located at the building of the Radio-Tlvision Franaise they have four studios with state-of-the-art equipment, an auditorium especially designed to the projection of electroacoustic music, and an archive, the Acousmathque, that counts more than 2000 titles of original electroacoustic

46 Schaeffer, Musique concrte 113-114. 47 I had recently (Paris, July 31, 1996) an informal conversation with Daniel Teruggi, the

coordinator for creative research at the GRM, who kindly explained to me how the work was developed at their facilities.

18 music pieces.48 Their research is now centered in the development of computer programs. GRM Tools, a program for digital signal processing in the Apple Macintosh, and MIDI Formers, a plug-in for Max, by Opcode (a program also for the Macintosh), are products are available commercially and reflect part of the research that has been done lately by this group.

48 Information available through pamphlets issued by the GRM (Paris: INA-GRM). The GRM

also has a web site where this information can be accessed. Address: http://www.ina.fr/INA/GRM/ index.fr.html. Accessed 20 June 1996

19 Works Cited Bayle, Franois. Musique Acousmatique: Propositions...Positions. Paris: INAGRM, Buchet-Chastel, 1993 - - -, ed. Pierre Schaeffer: Luvre musicale Textes et documents indits runis par Franois Bayle. Paris: INA-GRM, 1990 Brindle, Reginald Smith. The New Music: The Avant-Garde Since 1945. 2nd Ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1987 Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961 Chion, Michel. Guide des objets sonores Pierre Schaeffer et la recherche musicale. Paris: INA-GRM, Buchet-Chastel, 1983 Cope, David. New Directions in Music. 5th. Ed. Dubuque, IA: WM. C. Brown Publishers,1989 Groupe de Recherches Musicales. Online. World Wide Web. 20 June 1996. Available http://www.ina.fr/INA/GRM/ index.fr.html. Accessed 20 June 1996 - - - .INA.GRM. Paris: INA-GRM, n.d. - - - . Les studios. Paris: INA-GRM, n.d. - - - . Recherche en Sciences de la musique. Paris: INA-GRM, n.d. - - - . Rechereche sur les outils de creation. Paris: INA-GRM, n.d. Palombini, Carlos. Machine Songs V: Pierre Schaeffer From Research Into Noises to Experimental Music. Computer Music Journal. 17:3 (1993) 1419 Reed, H. Owen, and Joel Leach. Scoring for Percussion and the Instruments of the Percussion Section. Miami, FL: Belwin Mills, 1978 Schaeffer, Pierre. A la Recherche dune Musique Concrte. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1952 - - -. Introduction la musique concrte Polyphonie 6.La musique mecanise (1949):30-52 - - - . La Musique Concrte. Que Sais-je?. 2nd Ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. 1973

20 - - -. Pierre Schaeffer Interview. Interview with Tim Hodgkinson. Trans. Tim Hodgkinson (1987). n. pag. Online. World Wide Web. 15 June 1996. Available http://www.eecs.nwu.edu/~tissue/schaeffer.html - - - . Trait des objets musicaux. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1966 - - - . Vers une Musique Experimentale. 1953. La Revue Musicale 236 (1957): 11-27 Sutherland, Roger. New Perspectives in Music. London: Sun Tavern Fields, 1994