What the GRM brought to music: from musique concre`te to acousmatic music MARC BATTIER MINT, Maison de la recherche, Universite´ Paris-Sorbonne, 28, rue Serpente, F-75006 Paris E-mail:
[email protected] Sixty years ago, musique concre`te was born of the single- alive and the musical creations that it brings about have handed efforts of one man, Pierre Schaeffer. How did the the imprint that is their very own. first experiments become a School and produce so many rich An approach to composition would evolve that works? As this issue of Organised Sound addresses various would be impregnated by a specific thought. Differing aspects of the GRM activities throughout sixty years of from what was taking place in other great studios, the musical adventure, this article discusses the musical thoughts behind the advent and the development of the music created Paris School advanced above all through concepts. It and theoretised at the Paris School formed by the was this wish to adhere to constantly reinforced theory Schaefferian endeavours. Particular attention is given to the that gave the movement its unique character. That said, early twentieth-century conceptions of musical sounds and electroacoustic composition, which was the basis of the how poets, artists and musicians were expressing their quest Paris School, followed the contours of historical for, as Apollinaire put it, ‘new sounds new sounds new contingencies: technological evolution, relations to the sounds’. The questions of naming, gesture, sound capture, public, co-operation with the leading institutions; and processing and diffusion are part of the concepts thoroughly we must not forget the individual paths which tended to revisited by the GRMC, then the GRM in 1958, up to what is branch off in unexpected ways influencing the flow of known as acousmatic music.