Musique concrete : a translation and analysis of two essays of Pierre Schaeffer : L'experience concrète en musique, La musique écartelée
Date
1980
Authors
Zapf, Donna
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The musical experimentation classified as concrete music arose at a pivotal time after the second world war. Artists were resuming their roles in a world that was visibly in f lux. It is not merely conjecture to interpret the music scenario in the early fifties as germinal to musical developments in ensuing decades, or to recognize its value in a broader context as reflective of societal attitudes. Moreover, as time provides an objective perspective, there is no reason that critical analysis of this period should not be undertaken.
Within this context, the treatment of concrete music outside of France has been cursory at best. None of the literature concerned with the progenitive development of electro-acoustic music in France has been translated into English. As well there are few available recordings, the primary source of a music created on tape without score; inadequate bibliographies of composer's works; and a lack of accurate chronological data.
The present study is a translation and critical analysis of the writings of the initiator of concrete music, Pierre Schaeffer. For over a decade before the advent of concrete music, Schaeffer had been involved in the technical, journalistic and theoretical aspects of the broadcast media at Radio Francein Paris (RTF). Out of the context of sound in radio, he conceived of concrete music and was uniquely responsible for the first experiments, the initial development of an aesthetic-theory, and a compositional methodology. As well, he chronicled its progression. His writings are the only primary source of information for the first years of this experimentation.
The translation, L'Experience Concrète en Musique, was originally published in 1952 as the third section of a four part book, A la Recherche d 'une Musique Concrète. The first two sections are journals that outline the development of concrete music in the years of its inception, 1948-1951. These journals detail the experimentation with sound: the formal conundrums and the compositional results. They are imbued with the incredible excitement and bravado of open- ended research.
L'Experience Concrète en Musique, written in 1952, is a reflection on the undertaking, an attempt to coalesce haphazard ideology and fortuitous accident into unified theory and methodology. It is in this section that certain axiomatic ideas, emergent in the first concrete experiments, become crystallized and conscious. Schaeffer unfurls the banner of "experimental methodology" over musical composition, and solidifies the remarkable concept of musical research. He expands field of musical material to include environmental sound, and espouses an empirical approach to composition, Optimally, constructional ideas would derive from sound rather than from preconceived formal patterns. Compositional material consisted of sound objects created by severing a sound from its causal context, and eliminating dramatic-literary allusion.
This work i s also replete with a prescient phenomenology of music. This perspective is a primary aspect of Schaeffer's later work. His book, Traité des Objets Musicaux, 1966, as well as research in which he participated pursue a solfege of the sound object -- a detailed inquiry into the perception of sound. This phenomenological concern is present throughout this translation, and three of the seven chapters deal directly with a subject-object relationship in music.
L'Experience concrète is exploratory -- a venture into unknown territory. Terminology is not pre-existent and must be invented or improvised. A sense of the obsolescence of the prevailing musical system pervades the work, lending it an eschatological cast Ca meditation on the musical apocalypse) , even as it speculates on new possibilities and artistic expansion. With all of its inconsistencies, it is a journalistic syncretism of considerable value.
The second translation is a foil to the first. La, Musique Ecartelée published in this English translation in 1980, continues the premise of an experimental rather than an a priori approach to musical composition. In this instance, however, Schaeffer's thought is more clearly evolved. Illustrative references no longer range ever the arts as in L'Experience Concrete, but focus on contemporary music, using a hypothetical musical apogee (the eighteenth century) as a qualitative parameter. The article is an anatomy of musical experience rather than a presentation of a methodology of music. It provides a referential framework for A la Recherche de la Musique Concrète.
This introduction to the translations will clarify terminology and provide contextual references to Schaeffer's thought. Specifically, it will explore those premises about music and the nature of musical experience that are endemic to concrete music and shapes its compositional direction. Tools of literary criticism are appropriate to the material and have been used in this study.