ABSTRACT
Musical noises have existed in music from the past but are treated separately in one way or another. Avant-garde music likes complexity, with regards to both structures or compositional processes and sounds: in acoustic terms, noises are more complex sounds than the so-called ‘musical’ sounds. Before 1945, noise had already entered avant-garde music in several ways, closely combining morphological research and criticism. The avant-garde music of the immediate post-1945 era unmistakably has a ‘technocratic’ aspect. In instrumental music, dissonance, being so widespread, becomes commonplace: we can no longer consider it as a form of criticism. Much as the 1950s and 1960s were a period of faith in technocratic progress, the 1960s and 1970s were a period marked by protest. In avant-garde music, composers such as Iannis Xenakis, Luigi Nono or Helmut Lachenmann also use noises for purposes of protest.
