Pierre Schaeffer

GRM team in the studio 54 at Bourdan centre, 1972. Photo: Laszlo Ruszka. [1]

With Marshall McLuhan, 1973. Video.

Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician. 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.

Recordings

• Schaeffer's recordings on UbuWeb

Films

• Films and videos with or related to Schaeffer at Artsonores

Pierre Schaeffer, Traité des objets musicaux, 1966.

Publications

(in French unless noted otherwise)

Books

• À la recherche d'une musique concrète, Paris: Seuil, 1952.
  • In Search of a Concrete Music, trans. Christine North and John Dack, University of California Press, 2012, 225 pp. (English)

• Traité des objets musicaux, Paris: Seuil, 1966; 2nd ed., 1977.
  • Tradato de los objetos musicales, trans. Araceli Cabezon de Diego, Madrid: Alianza, 1988, 337 pp; 2003. Trans. of an abridged version. (Spanish)
  • Includes the essay "Acousmatics"; trans. Daniel W. Smith, in Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, eds. Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner, Bloomsbury, 2004, pp 76-81. (English). Trained as a radio engineer and announcer, Schaeffer was fascinated by the fact that radio and recording made possible a new experience of sound--what he called "reduced listening" or "acousmatic listening"--that disclosed a new domain of sounds--objets sonores or sonorous objects, the objects of "acousmatic listening".
  • Treatise on Musical Objects: An Essay across Disciplines, trans. Christine North and John Dack, University of California Press, 2017, 616 pp. [2] (English)

• La musique concrète, Paris: PUF, 1967, 127 pp; repr., Paris: PUF, 2020, 176 pp. [3] [4]

• with Guy Reibel, Solfège de l'objet sonore, 1967; Paris: Ina-GRM, 1998. With 3-CD. [5]
  • Solfejo do objecto sonoro, trans., notes & comm. Antonio De Sousa Dias, Lisbon, 1996; Paris, 2007. (Portuguese)

• with Sophie Brunet, Pierre Schaeffer par Sophie Brunet suivi de Réflexions de Pierre Schaeffer, Paris: Richard-Masse, 1969. [6]

• De la musique concrète à la musique même, ed. Sophie Brunet, Paris: La Revue musicale, 1977, 252 pp; repr., pref. Henri Dutilleux, intro. Sophie Brunet, postf. Sylvie Dallet, Paris: Mémoire du livre, 2002, 397 pp. Special triple issue of the journal (303-305). [7]

• Polychrome Portraits, Paris: Institut national de l'audiovisuel, 2009. TOC.

• Essai sur la radio et le cinéma, Paris: Allia, 2010, 128 pp. [8]

Essays

• "Sound and the Century: a Socio-Aesthetic Treatise", trans. & intro. Donna Zapf, Vanguard (Feb 1980), pp 6-12. (English)

Bibliographies

• Sylvie Dallet, Sophie Brunet, Itinéraires d'un chercheur: bibliographie commentée de l'oeuvre éditée de Pierre Schaeffer / Pierre Schaeffer, a Career in Research: a Commented Bibliography of Published Works, Montreuil: Centre d'Études et de Recherche Pierre Schaeffer, [1997]. (in French/English) [9]
• Pierre Schaeffer: A Survey of the Literature, compiled by Carlos Palombini, 2001.

Interviews

• Marc Pierret, Entretiens avec Pierre Schaeffer, Paris: Pierre Belfond, 1969. [10]

Literature

• Michel Chion, Guide des objets sonores: Pierre Schaeffer et la recherche musicale, Paris: Buchet/Chastel; Bry-sur-Marne: INA, 1983; 1995, 187 pp. (French) [11]
  • Guide To Sound Objects. Pierre Schaeffer and Musical Research, trans. John Dack and Christine North, London, 2009, 212 pp.
• François Bayle (ed.), Pierre Schaeffer: L'œuvre musicale, Paris: INA-GRM, 1990; new ed., 2010. Booklet and 4 CDs. (in French/English) [12]
• Carlos Palombini, "Pierre Schaeffer, 1953: Towards an Experimental Music, An Exegesis of Schaeffer's 'Vers une musique expérimentale'", Music & Letters 74:4 (Nov 1993), pp 542-557; repr. Electronic Musicological Review 3 (Oct 1998). (English)
  • "Por uma musica experimental", Electronic Musicological Review 3 (Oct 1998). (Portuguese)
• Jean-François Augoyard, François Bayle, Sylvie Dallet et al., Ouïr, entendre, écouter, comprendre après Schaeffer, Paris: INA-GRM/Buchet-Chastel, 1999. [13]
• Martial Robert, Communication et musique en France entre 1936 et 1986: Des transmissions à Orphée, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1999. [14]
• Jocelyne Tournet-Lammer, Sur les traces de Pierre Schaeffer, intro. Emmanuel Hoog, Paris: Documentation française, 2006, 473 pp.
• Brian Kane, "L'Objet Sonore Maintenant: Pierre Schaeffer, Sound Objects and the Phenomenological Reduction", Organised Sound 12:1 (2007). (English)
• Brian Kane, "Vestigial Schaeffer", in Schaeffer, Polychrome Portraits, Paris: INA, 2009, pp 13-17. (English)
• Pierre Schaeffer: mediArt. Proceedings of the International Conference, ed. Jerica Ziherl, Rijeka: Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, 2011, 160 pp. (English)
• Brian Kane, "Pierre Schaeffer, the Sound Object, and the Acousmatic Reduction", in Kane, Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp 15-41, n230-235. (English)

Links

• Photographs of Schaeffer at Ina.fr