Pierre Schaeffer: In Search of a Concrete Music (1952/2012)

“Pierre Schaeffer’s In Search of a Concrete Music has long been considered a classic text in electroacoustic music and sound recording. Now Schaeffer’s pioneering work—at once a journal of his experiments in sound composition and a treatise on the raison d’être of “concrete music”—is available for the first time in English translation. Schaeffer’s theories have had a profound influence on composers working with technology. However, they extend beyond the confines of the studio and are applicable to many areas of contemporary musical thought, such as defining an ‘instrument’ and classifying sounds. Schaeffer has also become increasingly relevant to DJs and hip-hop producers as well as sound-based media artists. This unique book is essential for anyone interested in contemporary musicology or media history.”

First published as À la recherche d’une musique concrète, Seuil, Paris, 1952.

Translated by Christine North and John Dack
Publisher University of California Press, 2012
ISBN 0520265742, 9780520265745
225 pages

Reviews: Daniela Cascella (Los Angeles Review of Books, 2013), Brian Kane (Organised Sound, 2013), Warren Burt (SoundBytes, 2014).

Publisher

PDF, PDF (7 MB, updated to an OCR’d version via Marcell Mars)

More from Schaeffer on Monoskop wiki (writings), UbuWeb (recordings), and Artsonores (films).