Editing Musique concrète (section)

{{Short description|Form of electroacoustic music}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2023|cs1-dates=y}}
{{Use British English|date=April 2023}}
{{Use shortened footnotes|date=April 2023}}
'''Musique concrète''' ({{IPA|fr|myzik kɔ̃kʁɛt}}; {{lit|concrete music}})<ref group="nb">{{harvp|Schaeffer|2012|p=xii}}: "[A] problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, with a readiness to see material for study in terms of highly abstract dualisms and correlations, which on occasion does not sit easily with the perhaps more pragmatic English language. This creates several problems of translation affecting key terms. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the word ''concret''/''concrète'' itself. The word in French, which has nothing of the familiar meaning of "concrete" in English, is used throughout [''In Search of a Concrete Music''] with all its usual French connotations of "palpable", "nontheoretical", and "experiential", all of which pertain to a greater or lesser extent to the type of music Schaeffer is pioneering. Despite the risk of ambiguity, we decided to translate it with the English word ''concrete'' in most contexts, as an expression such as "real-world" does not cover the original's range of meanings, and in particular it would not link with the main subject&nbsp;..."</ref> is a type of [[music composition]] that utilizes [[recorded sound]]s as raw material.<ref>{{harvp|Holmes|2008|p=45}}</ref> Sounds are often modified through the application of [[audio signal processing]] and [[tape music]] techniques, and may be assembled into a form of [[sound collage]].{{refn|group=nb|Musique concrète has been referred to as a sound collage technique.{{sfn|McLeod|DiCola|2011|p=38}}}} It can feature sounds derived from recordings of [[musical instrument]]s, the [[human voice]], and the natural environment, as well as those created using sound [[synthesizer|synthesis]] and computer-based [[digital signal processing]]. Compositions in this idiom are not restricted to the normal musical rules of [[melody]], [[harmony]], [[rhythm]], and [[Metre (music)|metre]].<ref>{{harvp|Holmes|2008|pp=45–56}}</ref> The technique exploits [[acousmatic sound]], such that sound identities can often be intentionally obscured or appear unconnected to their source cause.

The theoretical basis of ''musique concrète'' as a compositional practice was developed by French composer [[Pierre Schaeffer]] beginning in the early 1940s. It was largely an attempt to differentiate between music based on the abstract medium of notation and that created using so-called [[sound object]]s (''l'objet sonore'').<ref name=ODM>{{harvnb|Kennedy|Kennedy|Rutherford-Johnson|2012}}</ref> By the early 1950s musique concrète was contrasted with "pure" ''[[electronic music#Elektronische Musik, Germany|elektronische Musik]]'' as then developed in [[West Germany]] ''–'' based solely on the use of electronically produced sounds rather than recorded sounds – but the distinction has since been blurred such that the term "electronic music" covers both meanings.<ref name=ODM /> Schaeffer's work resulted in the establishment of France's Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète (GRMC), which attracted important figures including [[Pierre Henry]], [[Luc Ferrari]], [[Pierre Boulez]], [[Karlheinz Stockhausen]], [[Edgard Varèse]], and [[Iannis Xenakis]]. From the late 1960s onward, and particularly in France, the term [[acousmatic music]] (''musique acousmatique'') was used in reference to fixed media compositions that utilized both ''musique concrète-''based techniques and live sound spatialisation.