DESCRIPTION:
Cinq études de bruits
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cinq études de bruits (Five Studies of Noises) is a collection of musical compositions by Pierre Schaeffer. The five études were composed in 1948 and are the earliest pieces of musique concrète, a form of electroacoustic music that utilises recorded sounds as a compositional resource.
The five études were composed at the studio Schaeffer established at RTF (now ORTF), Studio d'Essai. They are:
Étude aux chemins de fer - trains
Étude aux tourniquets - toy tops and percussion instruments
Étude violette - piano sounds recorded for Schaeffer by Boulez
Étude noire - piano sounds recorded for Schaeffer by Boulez
Étude pathétique - sauce pans, canal boats, singing, speech, harmonica, piano
The works were premiered via a broadcast on 5 October 1948, titled Concert de bruits.

Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician of the 20th century. His innovative work in both the sciences —particularly communications and acoustics— and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end of World War II, as well as his anti-nuclear activism and cultural criticism garnered him widespread recognition in his lifetime.

Amongst the vast range of works and projects he undertook, Schaeffer is most widely and currently recognized for his accomplishments in electronic and experimental music, at the core of which stands his role as the chief developer of a unique and early form of avant-garde music known as musique concrète. The genre emerged out of Europe from the utilization of new music technology developed in the post-Nazi Germany era, following the advance of electroacoustic and acousmatic music.

Schaeffer's writings (which include written and radio-narrated essays, biographies, short novels, a number of musical treatises and several plays) are often oriented towards his development of the genre, as well as the theoretics and philosophy of music in general.

Today, Schaeffer is considered one of the most influential experimental, electroacoustic and subsequently electronic musicians, having been the first composer to utilize a number of contemporary recording and sampling techniques that are now used worldwide by nearly all record production companies. His collaborative endeavors are considered milestones in the histories of electronic and experimental music. -- Wikipedia