Pierre Schaeffer's Musique Concrete Pierre

¶ … PIERRE SCHAEFFER'S MUSIQUE CONCRETE Pierre Schaeffer succeeded far beyond his expectations in that he not only was able to conceal the object sources of his musical compositions from the listener but simultaneously for a time, concealed the very primitive base of his musical compositions from other composers who in that period post-war 1948 adjudged Schaeffer not to be among true composers. The primitive roots of Schaeffer's music is shielded from view because of the technological electronic methods used in producing these sounds from common and concrete everyday objects.

Pierre Schaeffer was one of the first modern musicians that connected music to common-place objects in the world surrounding him, or at least in modern times and the paradox is his timing, at the onset of electronically-based music. Schaeffer focused toward the source of music and turned the ordinary into extraordinary in composing and producing music with these common concrete items electronically.

As art and beauty are often said to be 'in the eye of the beholder' music be it good music or bad is 'in the ear of the hearer' and in the 'realm of the perception' of those who hear the many forms of composition which are known to be music. METHODOLOGY The methodology of this study is one of a qualitative nature in which an extensive review of relevant and peer-reviewed academic literature will be reviewed.

This review of literature will not be limited only to literature of musical content and critique but also of scientific and philosophical content and information regarding factors that affect the perception of music and the composition of music. IMPORTANCE of the STUDY The importance of this study is in the knowledge that will be added to previous studies of Pierre Schaeffer and 'musique concrete'. Further, this study will serve to clarify some of the confusion surrounding the debate of 'musique concrete'.

INTRODUCTION Pierre Schaeffer composed 'Etude aux Chemis de Fer' (Railroad Study) in 1948. This composition was an assemblage of steam engines, whistles and other various railroad sounds. The term 'musique concrete' was coined by Schaeffer to describe music that was made "concretely" through working directly with sounds as compared to music that was made in an abstract manner through using symbols for sounds such as in a musical score.

Schaeffer organized the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrete in 1951 which was a group that focused on the use of tape recorder in making music. This composition was entirely created through use of audio technology and existed entirely in a recording and required no musicians. Moreover, this composition was created completely from sounds that had been recorded and that were not traditional music sounds.

Schaeffer's work was confirmation of what Russolo had posited that any sound could be considered as music and Schaeffer further confirmed the thought that objects that were not in their original contexts could be reframed as art and it was this that led Schaeffer to coin the term 'musique concrete'.

Schaeffer stated in his writing that: "This determination to compose with materials taken from an existing collection of experimental sounds, I name musique concrete to make well the place in which we find ourselves, no longer dependent upon preconceived sound abstractions, but now using fragments of sound existing concretely and considered as sound objects defined and whole." Schaeffer's Education & Training Peter Schaeffer (1910-1995) graduated at the Paris Ecole Polytechnique and started work at Radiodiffusion Francaise (RF) in his job as a broadcaster and engineer.

During 1942, in the middle of the Nazi occupation Schaeffer was appointed project director of research in the area of science of musical acoustics. Toward this end, Schaeffer used the turntables at the radio station as well as the disc recorders, disc cutting lathe, mixers as well as a library of sound effects. Schaeffer devoted a great deal of time to the study of the use of this type of equipment through experimentation in music and radio theatre.

In 1948, Schaeffer had developed the technique of lock-grooving records, which is a method of instead of the disc being comprised of a spiral type groove toward the disc's center, there was instead a series of circular grooves that were enabled to continuously loop. Commonplace Objects and Their Sounds in Musique Concrete Schaeffer became engrossed in the study of the nature of commonplace natural sounds and made recordings of the different striking of percussion instruments as well as in editing bell recordings.

Schaeffer's discovery was that added to timbre, specific sounds could be given a classification based on their volume changes over time described as an 'envelope' and most specifically due to the rise in initial volume, or what is termed in music as the 'attack' and the overall volume and how it is shaped up next following the attack, known in music as the 'sustain' and the decay of sustain.

Schaeffer's Creation of a Series of Etudes Schaeffer created a series of etudes, which were all composed through recording sounds onto a disc using a lathe. Schaeffer would play back several discs at the same time through a mixer while composing each piece. Speeds of the turntables would be varied which affected the pitch, attack, and decay.

The Etudes were named as follows: Etude aux Tourniquets - Created from sounds of toy tops and percussion instruments; Etude Violette - Created from recordings of sounds from the piano; Etude Noire - created from piano sounds; and Etude Pathetique - Created from the sounds of saucepans, canal boats, a harmonica, a piano, and vocals.

Schaeffer broadcast these etudes in his program 'Concert de Bruits' translated to 'Concert of Noises' in 1948 with a divided listener response which garnered these compositions much in the way of attention even while they were controversial. At this time, two assistants were appointed to Schaeffer, namely, Pierre Henry, who had studied with Messiaen and was the first musician who was trained formally and who made the decision to dedicate his career to electronic music.

Secondly appointed to Schaeffer was Jacques Poullin, an engineer who assisted Schaeffer and Henry in realization of many of their ideas. The work of Schaeffer, took on a philosophical bent as he attempted to provide definition to the 'object sonore' or translated: 'sound object' in his attempts to derive a basic sound from that objects natural environment and time frame.

By 1950, Schaeffer and Henry had produced a concert live of 'musique concrete' featuring 'Symphonie pour un Homme Seul', which required several turntables and mixer, which was the first live performance to feature these without a mistake. Schaeffer added a tape recorder to his studio in 1951. Special Machines Created by Schaeffer and Poullin Several special machines were created by Schaeffer and Poullin including the 'Phonogene', which had a speed that was variable and enabled variations in pitch.

One of the Phonogene's had a keyboard that was used in the production of tape speeds corresponding to notes on a musical scale. The 'Morphophone' had twelve playback heads which enabled delay and reverberations and through splicing a passage could be played reversed through a simple splicing of a segment out and taping it back in to the composition upside down. Furthermore, Schaeffer and Poullin designed a 'tape loop' created through connection of splices to one another then going through the guide system for the tape.

This studio further had a sound system that could play five stereo tracks over five loudspeakers allowing performances to feature effect specialized by two front speakers, one speaker in the rear and one speaker overhead with the fifth track divided among four speakers with a handhold coil, similar to the joystick. Tape echo effects were created though a patch on the output of one track to the input of another track, which created a delayed version of the first track on the second one.

Other pieces created in this studio include: Etude I sur un Son (1952, Pierre Boulez); Etude II sur Sept Sons (1052, Pierre Boulez); Timbres-Durees (1952, Olivier Messiaen); Etude (1952, Karlheinz Stockhausen); Orphee, a concrete operation (1951, Pierre Henry); and La Riviere Endormie (Etude Poetique) (1954, Darius Milhaud). (Penn State University, nd) The following illustration shows Schaeffer's conception of the classes of pitch structure, grain elements, and vibrato.

Classes of Pitch Structure - Grain Elements - http://www.music.psu.edu/Faculty%20Pages/Ballora/INART55/images/concretemorphologies.gif Source: Penn State University (nd) LITERATURE REVIEW The work of Alan Nisbett entitled: "The Sound Studio: Audio Techniques for Radio, Television, Film and Recording" states that according to the originators of 'musique concrete' this type of music was built up in "three distinct phases: (1) selection; (2) treatment; and (3) montage."(Nisbitt, 2003) Nisbett states that "The first characteristic of musique concrete lies in its raw material: a sample sound which, by the choice of beginning and end, becomes complete in itself.

In some of the earliest compositions, emotional associations of the original sound were incorporated into the music. There was a later reaction away from this, on the grounds that the lack of an immediate mental association could lend power to sounds. The basic materials might include tin cans, fragments of speech, a cough, canal boats chugging or natural snatches of Tibetan chant (all these are in a work called Etude Pathetique). Musical instruments are not taboo: one piece used a flute that was both played and struck.

Differences in balance or performance can also be used to extend the range of materials.

All of this is very similar to the way that the sample integrated into popular music have included news actuality, political statements and fragments of other people's compositions." (2003) Nisbett additionally relates that the "preliminary concrete recording was described analytically in terms of a variety of sound qualities" as follows: Instantaneous content - frequency spectrum or timbre (which might contain separate harmonics, bands of noise or a mixture of the two); The melodic sequence of successive sound structure; and Its dynamics or envelope (the way sound intensity varies in time).

(Nisbett, 2003) Nisbett also relates that: 'The second stage in building musique concrete was treatment of the component materials to provide a series of what its composers called 'sound subjects', the bricks from which the work would be constructed. To help classify the growing range of 'manipulations' the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrete distinguished between: Transmutation of the structure of sound - changing instantaneous around content to affect melodic and harmonic qualities but not dynamics.

This includes transpositions of pitch (whether continuous or not) and filtering (to vary harmonic structure or coloration); Discontinuous transformation of the constituent parts of a sound by editing - a sound element that could be dissected into attack, body and decay. (Nisbett, 2003) The work of Timothy Dean Taylor entitled: "Strange Sounds: Music, Technology & Culture" relates that technological changes during the wartime and postwar era "affected every aspect of daily life and the industrialized world., not just at the level of jet engines or computers. In France, the U.S.

development of the atomic bomb precipitated a renewed drive to fund science and technology, and played a pivotal role in the rise of modern, technocratic France..." As well as throughout the world. This time was one that was characterized by a view of "the ideological power of science and technology" which inevitably affected the arts. (Taylor, 2001; paraphrased) This era was one referred to as "an era of extraordinary techno-scientific revolutions [the exogenous forces acting on the arts] were predominantly technological." (Eric Hobstawn; as cited in Taylor, 2001; p.

44) Leo Marx is noted as having written that "the culture modernism of the West in the early twentieth century was permeated by [a] technocratic spirit" or a "kind of technocratic utopianism." (Taylor, 2001; p. 44) Taylor relates that implicated in this technocratic spirit was the "...music in France...as any other art." (Taylor, 2001; p.45) According to Taylor, the composers in France pursued various ideas about the direction of new musical.

"Pierre Schaeffer noted the two possible paths art could take in an era of high technology; either technology could come to the rescue of art (his position), or the ideas of science and technology could be adopted for use and making art.

(p.45 REF 16) Technology, in the view of Schaeffer was a way "of rejuvenating music in the immediate postwar era while at the same time critiquing his rival composers..." (p.45) Taylor goes beyond merely providing an overview of Schaeffer and musique concrete but instead discusses the "...issue or meaning - both signification and communication, major concerns in the early days of this music - and to a lesser extent, historical prestige." (Taylor, 2001; p.45) Taylor relates that musique concrete was to Schaeffer "not...simply a genre, but a compositional aesthetic arrived upon in 1948 after several years of studio research." (p.45) Schaeffer states that they have not called "our music 'concrete' because it is constituted from pre=existing elements taken from whatever sound material, be it noise of conventional music, and then composed by working directly with the material.

"(Taylor, 2001) According to the analysis written by Taylor (2001): "The term concrete was probably borrowed from "Max Bill's idea of 'concrete art' which was reasonably well-known at the time, referring to a style that was clear and antinaturalist; later, however, Schaeffer's idea of the concrete shifts to become virtually synonymous with Claude Levi-Strauss's." Schaeffer informs that the intention of the term 'musique concrete' is to note or "point out an opposition with the way a musical work usually goes.

Instead of notating musical ideas on paper with the symbols of solfege and trusting their realization to well-known instruments, the question was to college concrete sounds, wherever they came from and to abstract the musical values they were potentially containing." (2001; p.45) Taylor states that musique concrete was "like figurative - not abstract - painting because it, like figurative painting draws on objects from the visible world, in a way resembling collage." (2001) Levi Strauss poses the argument in the Raw and the Cooked that in contrast musique concrete "is akin to abstract painting in that 'its first concern is to disrupt the system of actual or potential meanings,' since musique concrete composers endeavor to alter the source sounds so that they are not easily recognizable.

As a result, 'music concrete may be intoxicated with the illusion that it is saying something; in fact it is foundering in non-significance." (Taylor, 2001; p.45) Schaeffer held the belief that making source sounds in a way that would not be recognized was necessary "in order to allow the formal properties of the particular work to emerge, for it listeners concentrated on recognizable sounds they would be distracted by these rather than on the composer's skill. This problem of what we might call residual signification is central.

Recognizable sounds might evolke residula meanings that listeners might associate with the sound's origins which would mean that the composer is neither creating, nor in total control of, a self-contained aesthetic object." (Taylor, 2001; p. 46) In 1952 it was written by Schaeffer that "...even if noise material ensured for me a certain margin of originality in relation to music, I was...led to the same problem: the extract of sound material from whatever dramatic or musical context, before wanting to give a form to it.

If I succeeded, there would be a musique concrete. If not there would be only trickery and procedures of radio production." (REF 23; p. 46) in other words, in order to really create music from these 'concrete' objects it was necessary to hide the knowledge that these were indeed ordinary concrete items in everyday life while creating music with and from them.

In other words, there are sounds of life and there are sounds of music and to enable a cross over of common sounds into musical composition is what validified musique concrete in the view of Schaeffer.

Taylor notes that in musique concrete the sounds are "complex...[and]..."inseparable from its situation in the sound spectrum" whereas "in classical music, C is C, whatever its register." (2001) However Schaeffer did understand that "listeners would inevitably associate musique concrete sounds with their origins, and so moved toward a composition that included instruments and began devising ways of manipulating the sounds by playing recordings at different speeds and removing the initial attack (the beginning of the sound) of the recorded sounds, which renders them much less recognizable.

(Taylor, 2001) This would allow him to circumvent the possibility of listeners hearing residual significations and reexert control over the 'quality' of the sound itself." (p.47) Schaeffer devised methods of sound manipulation "by playing recordings at different speeds and removing the initial attack" or the sound's beginning...which renders them much less recognizable." (REF 27; p.

47) Schaeffer was encouraged by prominent artists in France such as Oliver Messiaen, Henry Michaux, and Claude Levi-Strauss to "make a break with the past with musique concrete." In addition, since Schaeffer was not trained as a composer, he held little interest for the tradition of music making "the burden of tradition.

lighter on his shoulders: in Foucaldian terms, he was less disciplined by a compositional tradition." (Taylor, 2001; p.47) Schaeffer was at odds with composers in Austria and Germany and Taylor describes the disagreements as being "instructive" in nature and "in order to understand them it is necessary to spend some time outlining the state of composition in postwar and Germany." (Taylor, 2001) in postwar Austria and Germany, "finding music of the past to draw on for inspiration was still important for most composers." (Taylor, 2001) the emphasis of postwar German composers what that which the Nazi's has demonized so instead of a fresh beginning these composers desired greatly to stand on the composers who had gone before them.

Critics and Critiques of Musique Concrete Taylor relates that the composer is not able to totally conceal the residual significations of the source sounds in musique concrete however Schaffer's efforts to do so have created in musique concrete "theoretically...new ways of listening" (2001) which has been adjudged by many critics to be "more lasting [of a] contribution than his compositions" (Taylor, 2001) Pierre Boulez criticizes the genre comprised by musique concrete and states "The question of the material, though primordial in such an adventure, was not taken care of these, where it was supplied by a sort of poetic display that prolonged the surrealistic practice of collage - painting or words.

The musical material, if it is to lend itself to compositions much be sufficiently malleable, susceptible to transformation, capable of giving birth to a dialectic and supporting it.

Deprived of this dialectic, which Boulez refers to as "that primordial activity" composers of musique concrete were 'consigned to nonbeing' that is, they were not in complete control of their works and as such were no longer eligible to be considered creators." (Taylor, 2001) Boulez adjudges composers of musique concrete to be "amateurs, as worthless as they are impoverished." (Taylor, 2001) Defining the Term 'Composer' and "Composition as Related to Music Music was once defined as "organized sound" the most primitive music is based on a precept of a beat or pulse or keeping time.

Therefore, the first music was likely the simple beating of one object against another object in the formation or creation of a rhythmic sound. thereby creating what is known as the basis of the first music created by humankind. Biblically speaking, Psalm 150 informs that making music unto the Lord may involve cymbals, tambourines, strings, reeds, and so forth.

Therefore, it does seem brash of Boulez to so promptly declare that the creations of Schaeffer were not musical creations and in fact Boulez's criticism of Schaeffer is so bitter as to be conceived as that of a jealously of Schaeffer for having thought of it first.

While Boulez states that the musique concrete composer is simply exploring instead of creating sounds isn't this the very beginning of music itself - the exploration of man in the properties and sounds, feel and use of objects and this too, is what Schaeffer and his colleagues sought in musique concrete: the explorative creativity possessed by primitive man. This belief is based upon the technological newness of this period of time, postwar 1948 and onward when technology so greatly impacted musical composition, production and presentation.

If Schaeffer is adjudged to be an explorer of music rather than a composer of music then how many composers will be disallowed from among acknowledged composers and even composers so famous as to be unknown such as in the old black spiritual music or the blues which relies greatly on the 'feel' the very essence of the train as it chugs along the railroad track? Where indeed does composition begin and end? If composition does end then at what point will the authorities in musical composition declare that all has been composed that can be composed? When, if ever did the musical mind However, according to Taylor "This view was the dominant one "both before and after World War II.

Histories of the twentieth music "produced in and not long after the onset of the postwar era greeted musique concrete with skepticism, if not outright derision." (p.

51) Andre Hodeir is known to have stated: "The founder of this 'movement' Pierre Schaeffer, is an eiletante with a bent for the wildest ventures, and had at first looked upon sound-objects as the makings of strange, poetic sound-effects and nothing more." (1961) Hodier is stated of Taylor to "rather ingenuously conceived the idea of arranging them in various patterns, much like visible objects." (Taylor, 2001) Taylor relates as well the article of Vladimir Ussachevsky, Russian born however an American composers which quotes "an unidentified source who said that the raw materials used in musique concrete and other kinds of tape were 'uncontrolled sounds, which belong to the acoustical but not to the musical domain." (Taylor, 2001) Reginald Smith Brindle in a review of musique concrete in England refused to refer to the composers as "composers" but instead referred to them as "technicians." (Taylor, 2001; p.52) Music as a "Language" Taylor relates that the 'how-to' guides that proliferated following tape composition "similarly reveal contemporary attitudes toward musique concrete." (Taylor, 2001; p.52) Taylor relates that the excerpt stating: Question: "You don't think people should know how we made our sounds?" Answer: "Not usually.

We don't even want them to wonder what made them. The essence of true music is that we are interested in the sound itself, not the cause." (Taylor, 2001) Within the discourse of the excerpt cited by Taylor is stated that it must be an individual decision in terms of what constitutes the language of music because it is a matter of communicating with other people. If you talk a language that you are familiar with you'll communicate quickly.

But in artist matters ease of communication tends to link itself with lightness of worth. Significant depth often involves a new language. But it's a very involved subject." (Taylor, 2001) Taylor relates as well that composer's of 'Elektronische Musik' held the idea that "electronic music should sound abstract was not new, thought I had to be (re) argued after the war." (p.

53) These arguments soon grew roots and rapidly due to the "aesthetic of the abstraction and the desire for the absence of signification were already the norms in the most prestigious modes of composition. Also, however, serialism became the hegemonic method of composition in Europe immediately following the war; even if one were not a serial composer, in order to be taken seriously one had to compose music that seemed to have something in common with it. (Taylor, 2001; p.

53) Schaeffer: "Each of Us Hears With Different Ears...Sometimes Too....Refined....Coarse The question posed by Schaeffer's compositions were those which had questioned "serialism's emphasis on rigor, which he elsewhere described as a 'corset of abstraction' and argued for musique concrete as a kind of middle way between Schoenberg and Stravinsky - to two leading figures before World War II - perceived as occupying divergent, even opposite, music aesthetics." (Taylor, 2001; p.53) Schaeffer wrote in his magnum opus, Traite des objets musicaux' that "Each of us hears with different ears: sometimes too refined, sometimes too coarse, but in any event always 'informed' by all kinds of prejudices and preconditioned by education." So, 'sound still remains to be deciphered, when the idea of sol-fa of the sound object to train the ear to listen in a new way; this requires the conventional listening habits imparted by education first be unlearned." (Taylor, 2001; p.54) Stated as the final "note on the historical underpinnings of this battle over the issues of signification...there is clearly a residue of older debates about musical meaning resonating in the rhetorical war between the musique concrete composers and the leektronische Musik composers.

This disagreement was a recapitulation or re-continuation of "a nineteenth century battle between Robert Wagner and his proponents and the composers whom thought they were not grounding their music in the real truths of poetry and drama." (p.54) it was written by Eduard Hanslick, the most influential critic of the time that "only meaning is music its in its form: "Forms moved in sounding are the sole and single content and object of music." (Taylor, 2001) Contributions of 'Composers' in Musical Composition The contribution the composer makes to these sounds are the instruments which are used to effectuate a sound, the pitch of the sound, the attack and decay of the sound and the clarity of the sound among other effects that composers provide sound with, by and through.

The nature of sounds themselves were the source of the compositions of Schaeffer and colleagues and Schaeffer states that he analyzed sounds "one by one, and wrote down the frequencies which I found at the dynamic level of the partials of the spectra, in order to know what sound is made of, what the sound 'is', as a matter of fact; what is the difference between a lithophone sound [any instruments made of a series of resonant, tuned stone slabs] or let's say, a Thai gong sound of a certain pitch.

And very slowly I discovered the nature of sounds. The idea to analyze sounds gave me the idea to synthesize sounds. So then I was looking for synthesizers of the first electronic generators, and I superimposed vibrations in order to compose spectra: timbres.

I do this now, still after 43 years." (Taylor, 2001) What Schaeffer is stating at the time of this statement following the newness wearing off of musique critique is that his form of composition was still unchanged with time even while the objects he used in these compositions had become more traditional in nature. Anthropological Base in Schaeffer's Theory of Composition There is an anthropological basis in the view of Schaeffer in his composition and particularly in terms of musique concrete.

Taylor relates his own involvement in radio in Africa during the same time period of musique concrete in which he was "deeply afraid that these vulnerable musical cultures - lacking notation, recording, cataloging, and with the approximate nature of their instruments - would be lost. I and my colleagues were beginning to collect African music.

(Taylor, 2001; p.57) Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss is stated by Taylor to have greatly impacted the perspective of Schaeffer and relates that Levi-Strauss wrote of musical concrete that it is a musical "science of the concrete." Boulez is said to have referred to musique concrete as a "bricolage" and Levi-Strauss later stated that he retained the term bricolage "not as insult but as something very interest. After all, how did music originate? Through bricolage, with calabashes, with fibres as in Africa. Then people made violin strings out of the intestines of cats.

And of course the tempered scale is a compromise and also a bricolage. And this bricolage, which is the development of music, is a process that is shaped by the human, the human ear, and not the machine, the mathematical system." (Taylor, 2001) Levi-Strauss "famously proposed the concept of bricolage as a primitive cultural practice in "The Savage Mind"...bricolage was the process of making culture, making knowledge through a 'science of the concrete'.

The bricoleur makes what is needed with the materials on hand with elements being "preconstrained by the scientist, on the other hand, is "always trying to make his way out of and go beyond the constraints imposed by a particular state of civilization." (Taylor, 2001) According to Levi-Strauss the bricoleur begins with the procurement of the materials presently on hand and then structure them while the scientist begins with an overall structure or concept.

Levi-Strauss names musique concrete and elektronische Musik in a discussion of art and that there are three modes of art as being those of: 1) the materials; 2) the application of art; and 3) the user, with the first two of these "locked in a deadly binary struggle." (Taylor, 2001; p.58) Schaefer suggested the following schematics of the 'ordinary' and the 'new' processes in compositions.

Ordinary Music New Music Abstract) (Concrete) Phase I Phase III Conception (mental) Composition (material) Phase III Phase I Execution (instrumental) Material (fabrication) from abstract to concrete) (from concrete to abstract) Source: (Taylor, 2001) Historical, Epic, Spontaneous Music In this research, and the resulting examination of what has historically constituted music this work reviews the work of Victor H.

Matthews, Ph.D., professor of Biblical Studies at Southwest Missouri State University entitled: "Exploring the Word of God (Unit 4: The Poetic Books) in which it is stated by Matthews that: "Even in its most primitive forms, music would have been employed by human communities for a variety of purposes...While engaging in strenuous or monotonous work (e.g.

treading grapes _ Jer 25:30 - or digging irrigation canals or wells - Num 21:17-18 - or raising a new house or barn), musical chants could be used to help maintain the rhythm of the workers and speed completion of the day's toil." (the Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), pp.

4:931-34.) Other references to music are in their "common use...in celebrations...both large and small..." (Matthews, in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, 1992) Many festivals involve music and victories "sparked spontaneous celebration and joy (Judg 11:34) Commemoration involved composition of heroic ballads and songs praising Yahweh and many of these such as the "Song of the Sea" (Exod 15:1-18) were spontaneous songs known as epic poems and many have a rhythmic style.

(Matthews, 1992) In a review of the work of David Rothenberg and Marta Ulvaeus entitled: "The Book of Music and Nature: an Anthology of Sounds, Words, Thoughts" Barbara Speed states that this book "deals with issues that are difficult to put into words..." (2001) Speed notes the statement of David Rothenberg in the introduction of "...humanity is tied to the rhythms of the world.

Once trained to listen, you hear what you are listening for; if we treat each sound we hear as part of a potentially meaningful sonic world, then the environment might have a place for us humans after all." (Speed, 2001) Speed states that in the first section "the roots of listening begins with Hazrta Inayat Khan's "The Music of the Spheres" where he tells us that "music is not only life's greatest object, but music is life itself...the origin of the whole creation is sound." (Speed, 2001) Speed informs this study that Peter Schaeffer, in the discussion of "the fascinating subject of 'musique concrete' music made of raw sounds...the question of when sound becomes music." Speed, 2001) it is stated in Section Four: 'Many Natures, Many Cultures' that: lifestyle out of balance with nature is frightening.

As long as we live, we aspire to harmonize with nature. It is this harmony in which the arts originate and to which they will eventually return...I wish to free sounds from the trite rules of music, rules that are in turn stifled by formulas and calculations. I want to give sounds the freedom to breathe. Rather than on the ideology of self-expression, music should be based on a profound relationship to nature - sometimes gentle, sometimes harsh." In other sections he describes gagku (Japanese court music): "..

In this stream of sounds that is gagku, a richness of sound undivided by rigid classifications can be recognized," and contrasts Japanese and Western senses of self and self-expression." (Speed, 2001) The work of Gianluca Sergi "In Defence of Vulgarity: The Place of Sound Effects in the Cinema" published in the Scope Journal of Film and TV in the Sound Special Issue October 2007.

Sergi asks the question of "What is sound effect? In this work the "nature and sound effects in the cinema" are examined and specifically: "...the additional two components of the soundtrack -- "music and dialogue -- " and it is next acknowledges that sound effect is an artificial sound, not found in nature" and sound effect "that is used to make films/plays/etc. more realistic.

In other words, a sound effect is something that is used in works of fiction to add realism." (Sergi, 2007) Sergi shows a listing of the characteristics of music, dialogue and sound effects and the following figure has been adapted to provide findings of the study being reported.

Sounds Effects (SFX), Music and Dialogue Characteristics Compared SFX MUSIC DIALOGUE Unestablished tradition: bastard" origin Established tradition: single origin (Music) Established tradition: single origin (Literature) Collective effort Individual effort Unrecognized critically Recognized critically Technical Artistic Sensual Sensual/Intellectual Intellectual/Sensual Lack of prestige Prestigious Vulgar (everyday-ness) Refined (exceptional) Source: Sergi (2007) Sergi notes as have others reviewed in this study that music and dialogue are able to base upon traditions that are "well established...concerning their standing in cultural and critical terms.

There would be no question about their 'respectability' and legitimacy because composers and writes belong to music and literature." (2007) However the situation from which sounds effects 'sfx' are viewed is much more "complex and articulated" as that is no one "single origin or tradition." (Sergi, 2007) Sergi notes that in cinema specifically "The purest moments of cinema are for me when music and image combine without dialogue or other interruptions." (McDonald, 2006; as cited in Sergi, 2007) There is no certainty beyond a doubt as when the music actually begins and ends however, soundtracks for films in only their pieces and clips have gained respect and win awards for their artistry in music and sound.

Sergi compares the perspectives of technical vs. artistic in attempting to make a distinction between the "technical and artistic portions of a soundtrack. The word technology comes from the Greek and means the logic organization of skills." (2007) the problem arises from the contemporary understanding of the term as being a type of machinery process instead of the view of artistic creation musically.

From a reflective view, it appears that technological advances in music are viewed suspiciously as were the early rock and roll musicians and composers when the Beatles arrived in the United States in the 1960s and music of this genre became 'noise' to the more traditional school of thought during that time. Rock and roll music was viewed as a cult type culture and the music was not viewed as music by the traditionalist among musicians and composers of that time.

This debate has been ongoing however: "To state the obvious, music and dialogue are perceived as being an almost entirely artistic enterprise, though sfx is fundamentally understood as being a technical matter.

Its postulation: sound designers are technicians, writer and composers are artists." It is a long held illusion that sound effects operate at "an emotional and sensual level rather than at an intellectual level." (Sergi, 2007) Dialogue is viewed as intellectual in "the sense of being the most crucial source of story-propelling information for the audience." (Sergi, 2007) Sergi states that "in short, sound effects are understood as customarily providing ambience, mood, scope and size, but not information, characterization and plot development, something traditionally understood as the domain of film dialogue." In the cinema, music is in reality a "fluctuation between sound and dialogue." (Sergi, 2007) There are then two vested purposes in music "Unlike a closed, non-referential mathematical system, music is said to communicate emotional and esthetic meaning as well as purely intellectual ones." (Meyer, 1961:44; in Sergi, 2007) Secondly, "the view is that the function of the music is to 'tell' the audience how to feel, from moment to moment." (Holman, 1997:xvi; as cited in Sergi, 2007) Sergi states that "Two main features emerge from these definitions.

Firstly, there is no immediate perceived need to identify the agency of these sounds. They come from somewhere out there (a forest, a bird, etc.) or from a piece of machinery (a television, a radio). Secondly, the connotation of sound in these definitions is one concerned with its physical and technical properties, not its artistic qualities.

Thus, the sound quality of the tapes was 'excellent' but no mention of the actual sound itself is felt to be necessary." (Sergi, 2007) Sergi states for example that when one hears a group and states: "I like their sound'. In this case the emphasis is squarely, the artistic qualities of the sound produced and the effect that it has on an audience.

Sound thus becomes less than a mere physical phenomenon and become a synonym for human creativity." (Sergi, 2007) Sergi states that it is interesting to note that "...the Latin world the English sound" is derived from is sonus which can mean either sound or noise as well as character or style. "In other words Romans were careful to stress that a sound has character and style, not just physical properties.

Indeed, Latin has over sixty words that refer to the concept of sound in some form or other, testifying to the difficulty in finding one single definition of what remains a very complex event." (Sergi, 2007) The work entitled: "The Flow of Time" relates the statement of Roger Penrose: "I think there's always something paradoxical about the way we seem to perceive time to pass and the way physics describes time.

And partly, it's a question of is there a clear temporal order of things in our perceptions or do we somehow put lots of things together and form pictures of things in which temporal order is all part of one thing...and I think we see this most clearly in Music where 'music' is something which has a fundamentally temporal character and it's just nothing without the passage of time, that's a crucial part of what music is.

And yet there is something of a whole there which you grasp as a whole, and there's something of the paradox of how time on the one hand seems to pass and each moment is an independent thing yet there is a kind of wholeness about it which we don't see in our present picture." (the Flow of Time, 2001) Bishop at Durham states to the narrators statement that: "To the medieval world there were two kinds of time: God's and our's..." that God is "in fact outside time so there's no before' for God.

He's present with each bit of our temporal story, and so he has a different way to knowing what's going to happen." (the Flow of Time, 2001) Outside of this human perception or indeed human state of being locked into 'time' is another experience and one in which those who claim to have crossed into that dimension and then returned in which music does not keep rhythm or time but flows endlessly and more beautifully than any music ever heard on earth and 'in time'.

The Physicist in this discussion state: "Einstein's Theory of Relativity was really the death-knell for the old concepts of space and time. Einstein showed that Absolute Space and Absolute Time could not exist any longer." (the Flow of Time, 2001) the by-product of time slowing is time travel to the future according to the Physicist.

In attempting to view music only in terms of the physical leaves the temporal quality of music lacking and in this, the extreme creativity and artistry is lost to some extent and at the same time because we as humankind are stuck in time in the physical world in order to understand and to even compose music it has been necessary to break music down into pieces that we can intellectually digest or comprehend.

It is our apparent and perceived state of being stuck within time that makes timing in music appear to be essential to composition of music and when applying the standard and traditional theoretical framework to music it is the human method of making music within the framework available to us in the present in the nature and volume that is available to us for appreciating music or specifically as played within the framework of musical timing.

Roger Penrose states that he believes that "most physicists would agree that the feeling of time passing is simply an illusion, something that is not real.

It has something to do with our perceptions..." And furthermore Penrose does not believe that humankind has the tools or the "physical picture to accommodate these things yet." (the Flow of Time, 2001) SUMMARY & CONCLUSION It is very likely that at the time of the compositions of Schaeffer and his colleagues that much debate ensued over what specifically does and does not constitute one to be considered a 'composer'. This debate was ongoing for quite some time and critics such as Boulez almost appeared vicious.