Pierre Schaeffer, des transmissions à Orphée (review)

Martial Robert: Pierre Schaeffer, des transmissions à Orphée. Softcover, 1999, ISBN 2-7384-7975-8, 416 pages, preface, illustrations, annotated lists of recordings, films and videos, archives and libraries, thematic bibliography; L'Harmattan, 5-7 rue de l'École-Polytechnique, 75005 Paris, France; L'Harmattan, Inc., 55 rue Saint-Jacques, Montreal, Quebec H2Y 1K9, Canada

Pierre Schaeffer, des transmissions à Orphée was published in May 1999 as the first volume of Communication et musique en France entre 1936 et 1986, a trilogy on Pierre Schaeffer by Martial Robert. The book appears in the Communication and Civilization Collection, which Nicolas Pélissier edits for L'Harmattan of Paris and Montreal. Mr. Robert, who possesses a doctorate in musicology, is a composer of electroacoustic music, a researcher, and an educator. Pierre Schaeffer comprises a photograph of the subject, a preface by Jean-Claude Risset, an introduction by the author, five chapters, a postface, and thirteen illustrations. There are annotated lists of sound documents and images, lists of archives and libraries, a commented thematic bibliography, and a table of contents. The author has examined eight thousand pages (many unpublished), two hundred radio broadcasts, and ten television programs. This volume was approaching completion in August 1995, when Mr. Schaeffer died.

As Mr. Risset notes in the preface, the writing is enthusiastic and apologetic. Its function is neither to assess nor to put into context. However, because Mr. Robert has worked extensively on public archives, an unexpected amount of objective data is brought into play. Chapter One (pp. 19-86) surveys Mr. Schaeffer's biography, from his ancestry and birth (1910) to life in post-Vichy Paris (1944). Chapter Two (pp. 87-126) focuses on the 1946 publication, "Notes sur l'expression radiophonique" (in Machines à communiquer: genèse des simulacres, Paris: Seuil, 1970, pp. 89-118) and the 1948-1951 Journals (À la recherche d'une musique concrète, Paris: Seuil, 1952, pp. 9-120). Chapter Three (pp. 127-174) tackles Mr. Schaeffer's transition from "musique concrète" to "recherche musicale," with particular reference to his experimental method. Chapter Four (pp. 175-242) presents Mr. Schaeffer as divided between composition and musicology. Chapter Five introduces Traité des objets musicaux (Paris: Seuil, 1966).

To evoke the early years, Mr. Robert puts together a collage of autobiographical excerpts from Mr. Schaeffer's prose. The account of his activities under the collaborationist government--a seldom tackled and potentially controversial issue--is direct and convincing. The author places Mr. Schaeffer's radiophonic experiments in the context of early French thinking on radio art. However, no reference is made to the rich German "Hörspiel" tradition (see Mark Cory's "Soundplay," in Wireless Imagination, edited by D. Kahn and G. Whitehead, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992). Commenting on the 1943 radio series La coquille a planètes, the 1948 Études de bruit (the first musique concrète pieces), the 1950 Symphonie pour un homme seul, and the 1953 opera Orphée, Mr. Robert stresses the continuity between Mr. Schaeffer's radiophonic art and his musique concrète pieces. There are accurate descriptions of such machines as "the most general piano," the Morphophone, the three-track tape recorder, the "potentiomètre d'espace," the shape modulator, and the chromatic, continuous, and universal Phonogènes. (Note, however, that on page 250, note 39, the Morphophone and the shape modulator are wrongly presented as the same machine.) Mr. Schaeffer's relationships to Luigi Russolo, Edgard Varèse, and John Cage are discussed in some detail. The book concludes with the repercussions of Traité des objets musicaux, or rather the lack of them. Since Orphée was presented in 1953 and the Traité was published in 1966, the book's subtitle, From the Broadcasts to Orphée, must be read as a metonymical allusion.

The meticulous work Mr. Robert has undertaken examining sources, libraries, and archives cannot be overpraised. His lists of sound documents and images as well as his commented thematic bibliography are timely scholarly endeavors...