Pierre Schaeffer

French composer Pierre Schaeffer earned recognition as the originator of musique concrète and stood among the postwar period’s most forward-thinking creators. By constructing abstract assemblages of sound detached from traditional harmonic systems, he initiated a transformation in sonic practice whose influence persists most strongly in hip-hop and electronica. Although born in 1910 without formal conservatory instruction, he was employed as a radio engineer when he established the RTF electronic studio in 1944 and began the experiments that later received the name “musique concrète.” Using discovered fragments of both musical and environmental origin, he produced his earliest tape compositions, layering and altering the material through modifications of pitch, length, and volume; the resulting works introduced a fundamentally altered conception of musical structure and listening.

Schaeffer’s initial public presentation, Etude aux Chemins de Fer, reached French listeners via radio in October 1948. While reactions spanned amused dismissal and outright hostility, several composers and performers took notice, including Pierre Henry, who joined the RTF staff in 1949, along with future associates Luc Ferrari and Iannis Xenakis. Olivier Messiaen also visited, accompanied by his pupils Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez. Schaeffer continued working, completing Etude Pathetique in 1948; its rapid montage of recorded voices foreshadowed hip-hop turntable techniques more than a generation later. With 1949’s Suite pour 14 Instruments he shifted toward neo-classical sonorities that were warped almost beyond identification. In 1950 he and Henry jointly realized Symphonie pour un homme seul, a twelve-part composition built entirely from bodily sounds.

The experience of collaborating with the formally trained Henry on pieces such as Variations Sur une Flute Mexicaine and Orphee 51 encouraged Schaeffer to pursue a more approachable idiom. The pair established the Groupe de Musique Concrète in 1951; later renamed the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, or GRM, the facility supported landmark electronic works including Edgard Varèse’s Deserts. By the close of the decade, however, most GRM participants grew weary of assembling music from disc and tape, and after the precisely organized Etude aux Sons Animes of 1958 and Etudes aux Objets of the following year, Schaeffer himself declared his withdrawal from composition in 1960.

He transferred leadership of the GRM to Francois Bayle and shortly afterward created the research division of the Office of French Television Broadcasting, directing it from 1960 to 1975. In 1967 he issued the essay “Musique Concrète: What Do I Know?,” which largely repudiated the aesthetic foundations of his earlier achievements and argued that the field now required “searchers” rather than “auteurs.” In subsequent years he pursued psycho-acoustic investigations under the heading Traite de Objets Musicaux (TOM), resulting in one last composition, the eleven-minute Le Triedre Fertile. He also undertook speaking engagements and produced occasional radio programs. Pierre Schaeffer died in Aix-en-Provence on August 19, 1995.