Brief introduction to musique concrète
Musique Concrète is a style of early electronic music, Pioneered by the likes of Pierre Schaeffer, Edgard Varèse, and Halim El-Dabh. The style of musique concrète is typically very raw, taking these raw sounds and using tape manipulation techniques and audio effects to alter these sounds. An example of musique concrete is Pierre Schaeffer’s ‘Études de bruits‘ which is a collection of compositions. This composition is from 1948 and some of the sounds used in the compositions are saucepans, canal boats, toy tops, percussion, instrument singing, speech, harmonica and piano. This compilation of tracks perfectly shows the how
How Musique Concrète helped the progression of Sound Art.
Artists like John Cage and Pauline Oliveros took the sounds of early musique concrète and pushed them further into the sound art scene in the 1960s and 1970s. By taking techniques like tape manipulation for example, and pushing it even further. A good example of this would be Pauline Oliveros’s piece ‘The Day I Disconnected The Erase Head And Forgot To Reconnect It’. This piece is about Pauline working at the University Of Toronto Electronic Music Studio during 1966, and the guy who ran the tape/synth area of the university would yell at her when she would use the synthesizers and machines because he deemed it as ‘witchcraft’ or some nonsense like that. This also shows that musique concrète grew into expressing more emotions as well as pushing further sonically.
Musique Concrète in Sound Art During The Current Day?
Musique Concrète now is still prominent in current day sound art. One example would be composer Mark Korven’s homemade instrument called the ‘apprehension engine’. Mark Korven is a composer who is most well known for his work on director Robert Eggars films ‘The Witch’ and ‘The Lighthouse’, both of which had Mark create these atonal, and Avant-Garde soundscapes that relate back to the early days of musique concrète. The apprehension engine is a machine that is compiled out of metal rulers, a spring reverb tank, strings, and other pieces of equipment like the Ebow to excite the machine to create these horror movie-esque sounds. This I think is a fascinating way of taking old techniques of music concrète and early electronic music in general and putting a modern spin on it. I would highly recommend both The Witch and The Lighthouse as the sounds created for the movie are definitely up the alley of sound art and musique conrète.
References
www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Mark Korven – Improvisation on the Apprehension Engine – YouTube. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbtuaIJKMI4.
TheBillser (2020). Pauline Oliveros – The Day I Disconnected The Erase Head And Forgot To Reconnect It. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CKVjO4wN5I.
Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Musique concrète. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concr%C3%A8te.