Sound is the vocabulary of nature.
About Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaefferwas a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrete (GRMC). 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.
More quotes from Pierre Schaeffer
Take a sound from whatever source, a note on a violin, a scream, a moan, a creaking door, and there is always this symmetry between the sound basis, which is complex and has numerous characteristics which emerge through a process of comparison within our perception.
French composer and musicologist
Sound is the vocabulary of nature.
French composer and musicologist
Has it struck you that the music which is regarded as the most sublime in western civilization, which is the music of Bach, is called baroque?
French composer and musicologist
Morally, the world is both better and worse than it was. We are worse off than in the middle ages, or the 17th and 18th centuries, in that we have the atomic menace.
French composer and musicologist
The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance.
French composer and musicologist
In contrast, traditional classical music starts from an abstract musical schema. This is then notated and only expressed in concrete sound as a last stage, when it is performed.
French composer and musicologist
Barbarians always think of themselves as the bringers of civilization.
French composer and musicologist
Noises have generally been thought of as indistinct, but this is not true.
French composer and musicologist
The whole problem of the sound-work is distancing oneself from the dramatic.
French composer and musicologist
It’s ridiculous that time and time again we need a radioactive cloud coming out of a nuclear power-station to remind us that atomic energy is extraordinarily dangerous.
French composer and musicologist
The impressionists, Debussy, Faure, in France, did take a few steps forward.
French composer and musicologist
First, it doesn’t surprise me that traditional music has experienced a kind of exhaustion in the 20th century – not forgetting that many musicians started to look outside the traditional structures of tonality.
French composer and musicologist
The moment at which music reveals its true nature is contained in the ancient exercise of the theme with variations. The complete mystery of music is explained right there.
French composer and musicologist
The world has just got more dangerous because the things we use have got more dangerous.
French composer and musicologist
People who share the same language, French or Chinese or whatever, have the same vocal cords and emit sounds which are basically the same, as they come from the same throats and lungs.
French composer and musicologist
The world changes materially. Science makes advances in technology and understanding. But the world of humanity doesn’t change.
French composer and musicologist
I’m very aware of what you’re talking about as I was involved with the radio in Africa in the same period as I was doing Concrete – I was doing both at the same time.
French composer and musicologist