ABSTRACT
A noise trend runs through a broad spectrum of today's music. But noise is not a discovery of today's music. Although it is true that, for a long time, theorists considered it the opposite of so-called 'musical' sounds, it innervated music unofficially, either through the needs of imitative music or through dissonance that developed up to the 'cacophonies' of the polytonalities of Stravinsky or Schönberg’s free atonality. With the bruitism of a Russolo, the sound research of Varèse, then with musique concrète, it made a grand entrance in music. It then developed in avant-garde music and tended to present itself – in free jazz, historic rock or with a Lachenmann – as social criticism. And it is henceforth spreading in industrial music, metal, rap, radical improvisation, 'Japanoise'… We can say, at the conclusion of this history – which is not yet finished – that the exploration of sounds of indeterminate pitch not only enriches the musical material but, in addition, changes our very conception of music. As regards the intention of this book, the increasingly intensive lack of differentiation between so-called 'musical' sound and noise opens wide the door of sound apprehended in its full generality.
