ABSTRACT
This chapter represents the result of the important experiments in concrete music, regarding transformation and composition techniques. In concrete music, instead, experimentation leads us from real sounds to composition. Compared to traditional music, made of notes played by several instruments, the attention in concrete music is focused on the specific quality of each sound. The most important piece of the concrete music repertoire is Symphonie pour un homme seul, Symphony for a Man Alone, composed in 1949-1950 and revised until its 1966 final version, the first of a long series of collaborative works by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. In concrete music concerts, the usual relationship between composer, performer and audience drastically changes. Concrete music carried on the process of appropriation of urban sounds that had been commenced in the beginning of the century in his writings Schaeffer discusses Russolo and Varese and their music made of sounds extraneous to even temperament.
