Pierre Schaeffer was a French composer and theoretician. In 1942 he became involved with a studio that was responsible for the first radio broadcasts in liberated Paris. From there he began experimenting with radiophonic techniques. In addition to being influenced by the techniques of radio broadcasting, he was also guided by cinema, the techniques of recording, and montage. These became the basis of musique concréte, for which Schaeffer is credited for developing.
Musique concréte, as Patrick mentioned in class, is a form of electroacoustic music. A form of music that is derived of sounds from voices, instruments in addition to electronic synthesizers and/or any recorded sound.
Another principle element of musique concréte is acoustomatic sound. Acoustomatic sound, as defined by Pierre Schaffer in 1966, refers to a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it. This a very common practice in film and is used in two different ways. One way is to allow a viewer to see the image that will emanate the sound as the sound is gradually revealed. This process can also be reversed. You hear the sound and then its source becomes revealed. In both cases sound and source become identified with each other, or “acousmatized”. The second method veils the source of a sound for a prolonged period of time which creates tension and a disorienting effect; the image is “de-acousmatized”. The French film sound theorist Michel Chion wrote that “the opposition between visualised and acousmatic provides a basis for the fundamental audiovisual notion of offscreen space".
These concepts seem almost obvious to us now as we have been effected by them in practically every movie we have ever seen. But as we take them for granted its important to realize that while cinema and sound recording technologies developed in the early twentieth century these were ground breaking concepts. The notion of acoustomatic sound may be helpful to us as we begin designing sounds for Dr. Faustus.
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