Pierre Schaeffer and the significance of radiophonic art

Pierre Schaeffer's reaction to his perception of “concrete sounds” was of fundamental importance to his later musical investigations. However, it is often dismissed as merely the promotion of explicitly anecdotal sound vocabularies drawn from the “real-world”. This is a misconception which obscures the significance of Schaeffer's specifically musical researches; the term “concrete” becomes vague and its cultural and philosophical resonances remain concealed. Schaeffer realised that in the acousmatic environment of radio broadcasting “real”, “documentary” sounds could be powerfully evocative, thereby transcending their causal origins. Subsequently, these experiences were refined as he examined how musical aspects might be extracted from any object in the sound universe. Thus investigations of musical language were actively promoted by techniques of radio production. Furthermore, anecdotal sounds encouraged a humanist dimension in Schaeffer's thinking: Man's reaction to the acoustic world when modulated by the transforming power of technology.