What the GRM Brought to Music: from Musique Concrète to Acousmatic Music
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What the GRM brought to music: from musique concrète to acousmatic music (by Marc Battier) Sixty years ago, musique concrète was born of the single-handed efforts of one man, Pierre Schaeffer. How did the first experiments become a School and produce so many rich works? As this issue of Organised Sound addresses various aspects of the GRM activities throughout sixty years of musical adventure, this article discusses the musical thoughts behind the advent and the development of the music created and theoretised at the Paris School formed by the Schaefferian endeavours. Particular attention is given to the early twentieth-century conceptions of musical sounds and how poets, artists and musicians were expressing their quest for, as Apollinaire put it, ‘new sounds new sounds new sounds’. The questions of naming, gesture, sound capture, processing and diffusion are part of the concepts thoroughly revisited by the GRMC, then the GRM in 1958, up to what is known as acousmatic music. Other contributions, such as Teruggi's, give readers insight into the technical environments and innovations that took place at the GRM. This present article focuses on the remarkable unity of the GRM. This unity has existed alongside sixty years of activity and dialogue with researchers of other fields and constant attention to the latter-day scientific, technological and philosophical ideas which have had a strong influence in shaping the development of GRM over the course of its history. What the GRM brought to music: from musique concrète to acousmatic music summarised by Rachel Quigley Electroacoustic music began in its first era at the heart of public radiophonic studio's. The tradition was established at the end of the 1940's by Pierre Schaeffer and was called the Paris School . The basis of the Paris school was electroacoustic composition. New ideas and theory based work came from a wide variety of composers such as Pierre Henry, Luc Ferrari, Guy Reibel, François Bayle. The Italian futurists Ballila Pratella and Luigi Russolo first suggested that new music could be based on turning the noises of the world into music. This idea was expressed again and again by many different composers in the first half of the 19th century and lead to a new found inspiration among artists and musicians at the turn of the twentieth century. Sounds from the world became a part of many compositions for example; the sounds of machinery used by Luigi Russolo. This interest in the 'sounds of the world' was the so called 'turning point' for Concrète invention and indeed for a great part of electroacoustic music. The gramophone was an instrument conceived for recording and reproduction. However many people were for the idea of it being used as an instrument for creation. Apollinaire proclaimed himself as a 'phonographist poet' while Boris de Schloezer held the idea that one could write for the gramophone similarly to how one could write for the piano or violin. In addition, Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt observed that phonography could exist as music without having been created by an instrument. Carol-Bèrard was one of the first to question why common noises „such as those of a city at work, at play, even sleep“ were not used for phonograph records. A question Pierre Schaeffer would ask almost twenty years later. The techniques of recording and montage became the basis of music concrète. For Jean Epstein sound recording „ revealed what was hidden in the act of simple acoustic listening“ and Apollinaire, who during December 1913 visited the Archives of the Voice at Sorbonne and recorded three poems, found his recorded voice totally unrecognisable. These unrecognisable sounds were explained by Epstein as sounds which had distanced themselves from the individual as a result of the recording process. This idea became the basis for Schaeffer's theory which he called reduced listening. Music Concrète was founded on the idea that an area exists 'beyond the sounds' and we can capture this by recording the sounds on a microphone. Listening to these sounds without a visual image concentrates the sound and our perception is reduced to that of 'pure listening'. Schaeffer commented (in relation to the microphone) that „ without changing the sound, it transforms the experience of listening“ Schaeffer was extremely fascinated with the difference between what is conceived and what is perceived, he refered to this as the seperator power. Schaeffer did encounter problems due to the technology available at the time to the Club d'Essai. He found that some noises could become a sound object when their anecdotal charater could be masked while other noises kept their dramamtic character and it was impossible to erase recognition of their source completely. The approach to music Concrète was in many ways based upon the idea of Faktura and other theoretical protcols of the Russian Constructivists. The Faktura has been defined as „a material knowingly chosen and rationally deployed“. Schaeffer implemented the Faktura of Constructivism to turn the sound event into „the musical object, material that was pure sound“. Pierre Schaeffer (1910-95) studied at the Ècole Polytechnique and was involved at the heart of the institution of radio. His role with the radio led him to make prolonged stays abroad. During these stays Schaeffer would persue his ideas for Musique Concrète which had been developing since 1948. Musique Concrète received an institutional realisation from the beginning of October 1951, with the creation of the 'Groupe de recherches de musique concrète' within the Radio-Tèlèvison francaise. Another studio was also created in October 1951, it was the studio of the NWDR in Cologne. Musique concrète had a large influence internationally. One example is from the composer Mayuzumi Toshiro who on return from his studies in Paris created a work in three pieces which was directly inspired by his experiences of musique concrète in Paris. The work was called Musique concrète for X Y Z. The Groupe de recherches de musique concrète organised the first International decade of Experimental Music. Pioneers of electroacoustic music such as Vladimir Ussachevsky, Hermann Scherchen, Pierre Boulez and Herbert Eimert presented there. In 1951 Schaeffer organised the first musique concrète workshop in which Pierre Boulez, Jean Barraqué, Yvette Grimaud, André Hodeir and Monique Rollin came to study. Olivier Messiaen was assisted by Pierre Henry in creating a rhythmical work Timbres-durè es. It was put together from a repertory of repercussive and brief sounds. Egdard Varèse made the first of the three versions of Dèserts (1954) and Roman Haubenstock-Ramati produced Amen de verre (1957). Many of these composers were already established and it is clear to see that the Schaefferian doctrine would not be followed strictly. For example Pierre Boulez adapted concrète processes to the serial method in two of his études. A repertory of techniques evolved over the years, many of which had not been established in the radiophonic studio. The techniques that are the most appropriate for the creation of musique concrète are remarkably few and consist of using the radiophonic studio technologies in special ways. We can separate these into three classes. Firstly there is the alteration and transformation of time. This was done using a turntable. Techniques such as segmentation, acceleration, slowing down, reproduction of sound back to front, repetition of a fragment and the application of a dynamic envelope using a level potentiometer were possible. Second is the transformation of texture and timbre. Perception of timbre is changed by temporal operations, for example if one cuts the attack of a sound so that only the sustain fragment can be heard the original timbre will be masked. With the arrival of phonogenes came the possibilty for speed variations which resulted in transpositions in time and pitch. The use of filters, ring modulators and amplitude modulators, as a form of treatment, developed slowly. They were progressivly installed during the early years of the GRM. However they were seen as electronic objects which worked against the philosophy of musique concrete and the GRM became sensitive to these means of transforming sounds. Finally there was the technique of spatialistation, that is, multi-channel diffusion. In 1951 Jacques Poullin invented a 'music stand for spatial application' and it was used in a concert shortly afterwards. At this concert one heard spatialised works by Schaeffer and Henry. In addition, by using a three-track and six-spools tape recorder Pierre Henry diffused a work by Messiaen with three fixed channels and a 'cinematic one'. In a statement Schaeffer made about musique concrète he stated that he shared many interests with his German collegues but he did not believe in their „elektronische Musik“. However the music he refered to was not the typical music related to the Cologne studio but rather music based largely upon electronic instruments such as keyboards. The art of reinventing machines into instruments of creation can be clearly seen from the progression of the gramophone. It was originally an apparatus for reproduction which changed to an instrument of production. Schaeffer used the gramophone as a means to generate unheard behaviours of sound using techniques such as closed groove- which created a loop, speed variation-which transposed pitch and tempo, reversal and removal. This lead Schaeffer towards the conception of musique concrète. These techniques allowed new sounds to be created from the original sound, which masked the identification of the source. The use of the turntable and its technical capabilities is the mark of the first works of musique concrète and was used up to Schaeffer's and Henry's Symphonie pour un homme seul. However during the work on this piece the first tape recorder arrived in the studio. Schaeffer deliberated over what to call this type of music he had invented.