SCHAEFFER, PIERRE

born Aug. 14, 1910, Nancy, France died Aug. 19, 1995, Aix-en-Provence French composer, acoustician, and electronics engineer who in 1948, with his staff at Radio-diffusion et Tlvision Franaise, introduced musique concrte (q.v.), in which sounds of natural origin, animate and inanimate, are recorded and manipulated so that the original sounds are distorted and combined in a musical fashion. The means of manipulation include changing the speed of the playback to alter pitch, playing the tape backward, cutting the tape so as to exercise precise control over duration, filtering out or reinforcing certain sound-wave frequencies, and other more complex manipulation. Schaeffer's 10-movement Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950; Symphony for One Man Only), produced in collaboration with Pierre Henry, was the first major concrete piece. This and other works of musique concrte reflect an approach to sound that had an important influence on composers of aleatory, or chance, music. Schaeffer's book la recherche d'une musique concrte (1952; Toward a Concrete Music) gives an account of his work.