---
id: schaeffer
title: "Musique Concrète"
year: 1948
category: "Sampling"
lang: en
canonical: https://nodemusic.cc/node/schaeffer
source: node.music
---

# Musique Concrète (1948)

Sampling · https://nodemusic.cc/node/schaeffer

## Summary

Pierre Schaeffer locked himself in a studio with train recordings. He rejected sheet music and synthesizers: "The material of music is sound itself." Thus was born Musique Concrète: a collage of reality, created with scissors and tape.

## Full text

Schaeffer worked as an engineer and utilized the 'locked groove' (sillon fermé) technique on vinyl records even before the advent of tape recorders. These were history's first loops: the needle skipped back, endlessly repeating a fragment of a train sound.

His philosophy of 'acousmatics' called for listening to sound detached from its source. When the sound of a train is slowed down and cropped, we stop visualizing the locomotive and start hearing the rhythm, timbre, and texture. 'Musique Concrète' is the work with sound as a physical object that can be sculpted by hand.

## People

- Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995) — French radio engineer and composer.

## Connections

### Influenced by

- [Art of Noises](https://nodemusic.cc/node/russolo.md) - INSPIRED
- [Magnetophon](https://nodemusic.cc/node/tape_inv.md) - ENABLED
- [Symphony of Sirens](https://nodemusic.cc/node/avraamov_sirens.md) - ENABLED

### Influenced

- [Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM)](https://nodemusic.cc/node/grm.md) - FOUNDED
- [Acousmatic Music](https://nodemusic.cc/node/acousmatic.md) - EVOLVED
- [Pentes (Acousmatics)](https://nodemusic.cc/node/smalley.md) - INSPIRED
- [Dr. Who Theme](https://nodemusic.cc/node/derbyshire.md) - TECHNIQUE
- [Forbidden Planet](https://nodemusic.cc/node/barron.md) - INSPIRED
- [Beatriz Ferreyra](https://nodemusic.cc/node/beatriz-ferreyra.md) - TECHNIQUE
- [Studio di Fonologia](https://nodemusic.cc/node/milan.md) - INSPIRED
- [Fairlight CMI](https://nodemusic.cc/node/fairlight.md) - TECHNIQUE

### Opposed

- [Elektronische Musik / WDR](https://nodemusic.cc/node/wdr.md) - OPPOSED

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concr%C3%A8te