Treatise on Musical Objects: An Essay across Disciplines

by Pierre Schaeffer, Christine North (Translator), John Dack (Translator)

Overview

The Treatise on Musical Objects is regarded as Pierre Schaeffer’s most important work on music and its relationship with technology. Schaeffer expands his earlier research in musique concrète to suggest a methodology of working with sounds based on his experiences in radio broadcasting and the recording studio. Drawing on acoustics, physics, and physiology, but also on philosophy and the relationship between subject and object, Schaeffer’s essay summarizes his theoretical and practical work in music composition. Translators Christine North and John Dack present an important book in the history of ideas in Europe that will resonate far beyond electroacoustic music.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520294295
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	07/25/2017
Series:	California Studies in 20th-Century Music , #20
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	624
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Composer, writer, and electronic engineer Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995) was the inventor of musique concrète—music created by combining and manipulating recorded sounds, rather than being played on conventional musical instruments.

Christine North is a translator of French poetry and academic texts.

John Dack is Senior Lecturer in Music and Technology at Middlesex University.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Instrumental Prerequisite

1.1. HOMO FABER OR HOMO SAPIENS

As will be seen, this work has no other purpose than to encourage listening to sounds, a traditional function of musicianship as opposed to performance classes. Given this, it is surely illogical to start by talking about instruments?

Certainly. But, before any logical considerations, there is our reader. We presume he is a musician; we know he is conditioned not only by acquired notions but through experience that probably preceded, and even formed, his musical consciousness. If we invite him to listen, to analyze his listening, he will refer back to that particular training in a way that is all the more impossible to resist as it is implicit. From the educational point of view the direct approach proves immediately to be no good.

If there were any doubt about what we have just suggested, the hermeticism of musical civilizations in relation to one another should give us pause: throughout Africa it is possible to experience fascinated crowds listening for hours on end to tom-tom music that at best inspires bored admiration in the Western listener, rather like the response he deigns to give to a concert of contemporary works. There are only two explanations for this boredom: either the language is intrinsically incoherent, or it is incomprehensible to those who are listening. And the fervor of the African crowds shows that the language of tom-toms, at least, is not inaccessible to everyone.

To understand this fact, we have to place ourselves upstream from these civilizations and try to see how they have arrived at this point, how, little by little, they were able to form and establish themselves. Beyond historical circumstances, and without making any claims to prehistoric truth, we must go back to the crude experience, directly linked to instinctive practice, of a homo faber, who probably, in everything and always, precedes homo sapiens.

1.2. NEANDERTHAL MUSIC

As we were not there, and as our man has left no other evidence but his bones, we must fall back on suppositions.

Did he meet his muse while listening to the belling of the stag or the roaring of the bison? Probably not. It is easier to imagine him on the alert, calculating distance, direction, the chances of a successful hunt. Not for one second does he linger or show interest in sound itself, which is immediately subordinated to the event it indicates and the plans it suggests to him.

But, in addition to a group of activities that are directly connected with his own survival, and are never dissociated from his perceptions, he has others, this time disinterested, taken from the example of young animals themselves: running, stretching, mock fighting, trying things out, exercising muscles for no particular reason; these activities, even if they have a use, as they contribute to furthering nature's plan, also have a margin of gratuitousness. Hence, prehistoric man must surely be familiar with two ways of using the voice: to call out, to give cries of warning or anger, or else to try out what specialists pompously call his speech organs, the pleasure of shouting at the top of his voice, and the pleasure also of hitting things, without there being necessarily any dissociation between the gesture and its effect, the satisfaction of exercising his muscles and "making a noise." Ought we to seek in games like these, later perfected as their meaning developed, the simultaneous origins of dance, song, and music?

We will not take this unverifiable hypothesis any further but make the limits of our investigations clear: we simply wish to point out the presence, from the very beginning, of these two tendencies: actions in response to external requirements; disinterested activities in response to autonomous inspiration. Essentially different, these types of activity constantly interact in reality, of course, and we have separated them here only for the purposes of exposition.

Although they became more and more different, the utensil and the musical instrument were in essence probably related and contemporary in just the same way. We are equally willing to wager that there was no distinction between them in reality, either, and that the same calabash did equally well for soup and music.

1.3. THE INSTRUMENTAL PARADOX: THE BIRTH OF MUSIC

Doubtless a single calabash would not have been enough. But two, three calabashes? The signal, which referred to the utensil, becomes a pleonasm and cancels itself out through repetition. All that is left is the "sound object," perceived completely disinterestedly, which "strikes the ear" as something that has absolutely no use but imposes its presence and is enough to transform the cook into an experimental musician.

Connected to his own activity and the sound body, but also, paradoxically, independent of these, he has just discovered Music — because that is already what it is — and, along with this, the possibility of playing what will later be called an instrument.

Let us make ourselves clear. Instrumental activity, the first and visible cause of every musical phenomenon, has the peculiarity that above all else it tends to cancel itself out as material cause. And this in two ways:

The repetition of the same causal phenomenon, through saturation of the signal, removes its practical significance (for example, a particular object strikes another in a particular way) and suggests a disinterested activity: this is how the utensil becomes the instrument.

The variation of something perceptible within the causal repetition accentuates the disinterested nature of the activity in relation to the instrument itself and gives it a new interest by creating a different kind of event, an event that we have to call musical. This is the simplest, the most general, and the least preconceived definition of music. Even if the calabash player does not yet know how to play it, expresses nothing or does not make himself understood, he "is making music." What else would he be doing?

1.4. FROM THE INSTRUMENT TO THE WORK

The three calabashes make up a given, imposed vocabulary, allowing ways of playing that are impoverished, certainly, but already numerous and unconstrained. And our improvised musician improvises. The variation the instrument permits gives rise to variations, that is, "pieces of music." As soon as one of these is recognized, distinguished from the others, deliberately repeated, we can say that we have, if not a language, at least a work. Leaving aside any aesthetic judgment, the work is a fact, almost as clear as the fact of the instrument and undeniably connected to it.

Thus, we would be happy to argue, it precedes even what it postulates — a language and what this is made of: objects. If there are rules for playing an instrument, registers, and concepts, it will require thousands of years and a long period of learning by musical civilizations to develop and formulate them.

Spontaneous starting points such as these even explain the diversity of these languages: they come from material circumstances, historical tendencies that are infinitely varied but also very specific, each responsible for a particular musical experience, each opening up a field of music.

1.5. FROM THE INSTRUMENT TO THE MUSICAL DOMAIN: MUSICAL CIVILIZATIONS

So we return to our calabashes and suppose that they have been refined by being covered with a skin. Clearly, what is given is the device. What is to come is the broadening of experience, depending on the various ways of behaving in relation to the device. The behavior that dominates will determine one kind of music — that is, one musical field — rather than another: our primitive man, by dint of playing his calabashes, arrives at a particular form of virtuosity that will condition his music. He may play them in several ways: on the one hand, with a stick or the tips of his fingers he will obtain sounds of greater or lesser intensity but, above all, in a given order, which will produce a language of rhythms; on the other hand, if, independently of the percussive movement of his fingers, he learns to control the pressure of his palm on the skin, each of these sounds will be modulated in pitch and will involve an additional value in which these pitches, even ill-defined, will play a part.

Prior to any rhythmic or melodic codification, we can see four dimensions in this instinctive activity: two of these, rhythm and pitch, are relatively explicit; the other two, timbre and intensity, are implicit. Finally, we can classify these four planes where music operates according to their dominance.

For example, the rhythmic plane will dominate if the melodic modulation is only an ornament. The other two will be integrated into the preceding ones: nuance will merge with the rhythmic structure, and timbre will differentiate one calabash from another. But, more oft en, the primitive musician playing two or three tom-toms or joining other tom-tom players will keep rhythm dominant, "ornamented" with the other values. Conversely, if he invents the lithophone, the melodic will dominate in his music.

What might be a Western musician's attitude toward these phenomena? He would begin by reducing them either to "percussion rhythm" motifs or to a study in scales of pitch, thus moving rapidly from instrumental technique to the structures it delivers. He will not notice that even though, generally speaking, rhythmical structures predominate in primitive musics, they always coexist with the other three types of modulation. He will tend to notate in eighth notes and sixteenth notes something that cannot of course be reduced in this way, even on the rhythmic level; he will certainly not adopt a holistic approach, through musical objects, that is, the given components of other types of musical expression different from his own. And so he will find himself engaged in an undertaking as meaningless as deciphering hieroglyphics with a two-foot ruler or the Greek alphabet. This explains why musical civilizations are sealed off from each other; to overcome this, we must go back to the beginning to take into account a fact that could be described as a miracle of virtuosity. The discovery of registers is no more than the art of using the instrumental material that a particular civilization has to hand. The concrete precedes the abstract.

1.6. CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT IN MUSIC

So the phenomenon of music has two related aspects: a tendency toward abstraction, inasmuch as performing draws out structures, and an involvement with the concrete, inasmuch as it remains tied to the potential of the instrument. It is worth noting here that, depending on what the instrumental and cultural context is, the music produced will be mainly concrete, mainly abstract, or more or less a balance of the two.

In light of this we should note the constant interdependence of abstract and concrete in the interplay of pitches in most musics. Even if the Sicilian scarcely manages to get A E I O U colored with harmonics from his Jew's harp, if the tom-tom is still on the threshold of a perfect chord, and if the reita, the Arab violin, happily lingers on notes that we find out of tune, the Indian baladar plays a more and more refined calibration of pitches and, in the course of interminable ragas, never tires of perfecting unisons and octaves. Indian music, like Chinese music, achieves an amazing synthesis of the two tendencies: it uses the calibration of pitches, not only pentatonic, as is conventionally taught, but oft en diatonic, along with sliding sounds, greatly extended in the pitch register, between perfectly defined intervals where it is delightful to fill in the gaps, particularly if the dynamic profile of these sounds is expertly gauged. Here we are anticipating notions of calibration from which this book ascetically turns away but which could shed light on it. ... Where, indeed, could we find the origin of the use, both so free and so complex, of everything that is capable of making music except in the instrument pushed to its limit?

Clearly, as far as pitch is concerned, an instrument can be used in all sorts of different ways, from the crudest to the most subtle. The African balaphone, for example, can be calibrated according to a completely arbitrary local tradition, whereas the baladar, it seems, was intended for a most scholarly marking off into sections, allowing for division into microintervals, as well as continuous passages. The Hawaiian guitar gives only a crude, almost automatic wailing, whereas Indian or Japanese instruments, like the hsiennfou or the kunanoto, can produce an attack within an interval of pitches that are precise, contained, and carved out in time in all freedom and originality. And when we come to the voice, how can we ignore the richness of uses like these, from the cry, almost detached from any calibration, right down to vocalized sound in a well-defined interval, or Tibetan murmuring, where melody is simply a background for the spoken word?

Do people think that, even in the West, we are insensitive to this interplay of approximate pitches, which we scarcely dare acknowledge? Does a good voice, in a Lied that particularly highlights this, express itself only through the pitch indicated on the score? Is there not, in genuinely subtle interpretations, an almost Asian vocal latitude and an interplay of timbres even in the course of the sounds? This is even clearer in jazz.

So from now on no instruments, even and above all Western ones, should be reduced to the stereotyped registration that governs the way they are played. We must recognize their concrete aspect and appreciate the "rules for playing" that mark the extent and the limits, the degree of freedom they allow the performer. It is absurd to criticize, as do too many contemporary musicians, the so-called imprecision of instrumental playing, which would necessitate the technical perfection expected of machines, under the pretext that the best music is the most precise.

In truth it is neither pitches nor timbres nor intensities nor durations that need to be accurate or strictly obedient to a notation. It is the presence of a composer's or a performer's intention, superimposed on these very approximate or too-abstract reference points, that ultimately calibrates every sound entity and gives it its form, its two-, three-, or fourfold originality: the specific originality of a particular violin, the contingent, or varying, but keenly recognized as "successful" or "failed," originality of the performance of a particular musical object that is, however, attributed to the style of a particular performer. And this by virtue of a truly wonderful ambivalence in every sound entity that must necessarily be heard as responsive to fixed values, and yet, from one note to another, from one performance to another, as infinitely varied.

1.7. REGISTERS AND MUSICAL DOMAINS

Whether we are dealing with strings, membranes, strips of wood, or metal pipes, simple or complex instruments, it is nonetheless apparent that musical experimentation has centered almost exclusively on variations of pitch. Indeed, it seems that pitch is the key to the liberating gesture and the power of abstraction that give rise to music and to musical potential, as well as instrumental music-making.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Treatise on Musical Objects"
by .
Copyright © 2017 The Regents of the University of California.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

The Treatise on Musical Objects and the GRM, by Daniel Teruggi
Translators’ Introduction, by Christine North
Pierre Schaeffer’s Treatise on Musical Objects and Music Theory, by John Dack
Acknowledgments
Preface

Introductory Remarks: The Historical Situation of Music

Book One. Making Music
1. The Instrumental Prerequisite
2. Playing an Instrument
3. Capturing Sounds
4. Acousmatics

Book Two. Hearing
5. "What Can Be Heard"
6. The Four Listening Modes
7. Scientific Prejudice
8. The Hearing Intention

Book Three. Correlations Between the Physical Signal and the Musical Object
9. Ambiguities in Musical Acoustics
10. Correlation between Spectra and Pitches
11. Threshold and Transients
12. Temporal Anamorphoses I: Timbres and Dynamics
13. Temporal Anamorphoses II: Timbre and Instrument
14. Time and Duration

Book Four. Objects and Structures
15. Reduction to the Object
16. Perceptual Structures
17. Comparative Structures: Music and Language
18. The Conventional Musical System: Musicality and Sonority
19. Natural Sound Structures: Musicianly Listening
20. The Reduced Listening System: Musical Dualism
21. Musical Research

Book Five. Morphology and Typology of Sound Objects
22. Morphology of Sound Objects
23. The Laboratory
24. Typology of Musical Objects (I): Classification Criteria
25. Typology of Musical Objects (II): Balanced and Redundant Objects
26. Typology of Musical Objects (III): Eccentric Sounds
27. Working at Our Instrument

Book Six. Theory of Musical Objects
28. Musical Experience
29. Generalizing Music Theory
30. Theory of Homogenous Sounds: Criterion of Mass
31. Theory of Fixed Masses: Dynamic Criterion
32. Theory of Sustainment
33. Theory of Variations
34. Analysis of the Musical Object as It Generally Appears

Book Seven. Music as a Discipline
35. Implementation
36. The Meaning of Music
Penultimate Chapter: In the Search of Music Itself

Postscript
Index

Editorial Reviews

"[Christine North and John Dack's] English translation is as effective as Schaeffer’s text, which in turn exercises its full correlative power to English readers to the extent that the translators have rendered it."

Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal