Treatise on musical objects
Subtitle: an essay across disciplines
By: Pierre Schaeffer ; translated by Christine North and John Dack
Contributors: North, Christine, translator; Dack, John, translator
Series: California studies in 20th-century music -- 20; California studies in 20th-century music -- 20.
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 569
ISBN-13: 9780520294301; 9780520967465
Subjects: Music and technology; Musique concrète; Music; Acoustics and physics; Philosophy and aesthetics; Sound (Philosophy); History and criticism
Work titles: Traité des objets musicaux
Description: "The Treatise on musical objects by Pierre Schaeffer is regarded as his most important work on music and its relationship with technology. Schaeffer refers to his earlier research in musique concrète and expands this to suggest a methodology of working with sounds resulting from the recording process. Drawing on acoustics, physics, and physiology, but also philosophy and the relationship between subject and object, Schaeffer's book summarizes his theoretical and practical work in music composition. North and Dack present an important book in the history of ideas in Europe that will resonate far beyond electroacoustic music."--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Translated from the French.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Translated from the French.
Table of contents: title: Book one. Making music. The instrumental prerequisite ; Playing an instrument ; Capturing sounds ; Acousmatics; title: Book two. Hearing. "What can be heard" ; The four listening modes ; Scientific prejudice ; The hearing intention; title: Book three. Correlations between the physical signal and the musical object. Ambiguities in musical acoustics ; Correlation between spectra and pitches ; Thresholds and transients ; Temporal anamorphoses I: timbres and dynamics ; Temporal anamorphoses II: timbre and instrument ; Time and duration; title: Book four. Objects and structures. Reduction to the object ; Perceptual structures ; Comparative structures: music and language ; The conventional musical system: musicality and sonority ; Natural sound structures: musicianly listening ; The reduced listening system: musical dualism ; Musical research; title: Book five. Morphology and typology of sound objects. Morphology of sound objects ; The laboratory ; Typology of musical objects (I): classification criteria ; Typology of musical objects (II): balanced and redundant objects ; Typology of musical objects (III): eccentric sounds ; Working at our instrument; title: Book six. Theory of musical objects. Musical experience ; Generalizing music theory ; Theory of homogeneous sounds: criterion of mass ; Theory of fixed masses: dynamic criterion ; Theory of sustainment ; Theory of variations ; Analysis of the musical object as it generally appears; title: Book seven. Music as a discipline. Implementation ; The meaning of music; title: Penultimate chapter : in search of music itself; title: Postscript.