{ "slug": "musique-concrete", "name": "Musique Concrète", "aliases": [ "concrete music", "tape music", "elektronische musik", "electroacoustic" ], "description": "Paris, 1948: a radio engineer decides that a recording of a train is material for a composition. The moment recorded sound stops documenting music and starts being it, which is the premise every sampler on this map depends on.", "origin": { "place": "Paris, France", "year": 1948 }, "lineage": [ { "genre": "modernism", "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/modernism/", "inherited": "The argument arrived first. Russolo's noise machines and Varèse's insistence that music is organised sound had already won the case for material by 1913; Schaeffer simply had a tape machine and could act on it." } ], "bpm": null, "updated": "2026-08-30", "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/musique-concrete/", "trackCount": 8, "curatedBy": [], "playlists": {}, "tracks": [ { "rank": 1, "trackKey": "pierre-schaeffer--etude-aux-chemins-de-fer", "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/pierre-schaeffer--etude-aux-chemins-de-fer/", "title": "Étude aux chemins de fer", "artist": "Pierre Schaeffer", "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/pierre-schaeffer/", "year": 1948, "label": null, "isrc": null, "whyItMatters": "Six locomotives, cut and looped on shellac discs. The first piece of music made entirely from recordings of things, and the founding act of everything sample-based that followed.", "alsoOn": [], "links": { "spotify": { "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Pierre%20Schaeffer%20%C3%89tude%20aux%20chemins%20de%20fer", "exact": false }, "youtubeMusic": { "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=ioMr0dQLctI", "exact": true } } }, { "rank": 2, "trackKey": "karlheinz-stockhausen--gesang-der-junglinge", "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/karlheinz-stockhausen--gesang-der-junglinge/", "title": "Gesang der Jünglinge", "artist": "Karlheinz Stockhausen", "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/karlheinz-stockhausen/", "year": 1956, "label": null, "isrc": null, "whyItMatters": "A boy's voice and synthesised tone placed on the same continuum and moved around five loudspeakers. Cologne's answer to Paris, and still the more technically astonishing of the two.", "alsoOn": [], "links": { "spotify": { "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Karlheinz%20Stockhausen%20Gesang%20der%20J%C3%BCnglinge", "exact": false }, "youtubeMusic": { "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=-RMGGVlMuwo", "exact": true } } }, { "rank": 3, "trackKey": "edgard-varese--poeme-electronique", "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/edgard-varese--poeme-electronique/", "title": "Poème électronique", "artist": "Edgard Varèse", "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/edgard-varese/", "year": 1958, "label": null, "isrc": null, "whyItMatters": "Written for four hundred speakers in a pavilion Le Corbusier and Xenakis designed for it. Eight minutes, heard by two million people, and almost nobody has heard it properly since.", "alsoOn": [], "links": { "spotify": { "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Edgard%20Var%C3%A8se%20Po%C3%A8me%20%C3%A9lectronique", "exact": false }, "youtubeMusic": { "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=WQKyYmU2tPg", "exact": true } } }, { "rank": 4, "trackKey": "pierre-schaeffer-and-pierre-henry--symphonie-pour-un-homme-seul", "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/pierre-schaeffer-and-pierre-henry--symphonie-pour-un-homme-seul/", "title": "Symphonie pour un homme seul", "artist": "Pierre Schaeffer & Pierre Henry", "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/pierre-schaeffer-and-pierre-henry/", "year": 1950, "label": null, "isrc": null, "whyItMatters": "Breathing, footsteps, humming and a prepared piano, assembled into something that keeps threatening to become a song. The first extended work in the form.", "alsoOn": [], "links": { "spotify": { "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Pierre%20Schaeffer%20%26%20Pierre%20Henry%20Symphonie%20pour%20un%20homme%20seul", "exact": false }, "youtubeMusic": { "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=24mPiq1vfaY", "exact": true } } }, { "rank": 5, "trackKey": "john-cage--williams-mix", "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/john-cage--williams-mix/", "title": "Williams Mix", "artist": "John Cage", "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/john-cage/", "year": 1952, "label": null, "isrc": null, "whyItMatters": "Six hundred recordings spliced according to chance operations, taking a year to cut for four minutes of tape. Cage's most laborious piece and his most gleefully pointless.", "alsoOn": [], "links": { "spotify": { "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/John%20Cage%20Williams%20Mix", "exact": false }, "youtubeMusic": { "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=ApQap2o2Tbw", "exact": true } } }, { "rank": 6, "trackKey": "hugh-le-caine--dripsody", "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/hugh-le-caine--dripsody/", "title": "Dripsody", "artist": "Hugh Le Caine", "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/hugh-le-caine/", "year": 1955, "label": null, "isrc": null, "whyItMatters": "Made from a single recording of one water drop, transposed and layered into an entire piece. Ninety seconds, and the most charming demonstration of the whole idea.", "alsoOn": [], "links": { "spotify": { "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Hugh%20Le%20Caine%20Dripsody", "exact": false }, "youtubeMusic": { "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=zvHSvSBwFYM", "exact": true } } }, { "rank": 7, "trackKey": "morton-subotnick--silver-apples-of-the-moon", "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/morton-subotnick--silver-apples-of-the-moon/", "title": "Silver Apples of the Moon", "artist": "Morton Subotnick", "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/morton-subotnick/", "year": 1967, "label": "Nonesuch", "isrc": null, "whyItMatters": "The first electronic work commissioned specifically as an LP, made on a Buchla. Composed for the living room rather than the concert hall, which is a bigger break than the sound suggests.", "alsoOn": [], "links": { "spotify": { "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Morton%20Subotnick%20Silver%20Apples%20of%20the%20Moon", "exact": false }, "youtubeMusic": { "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=9HoljsO22qA", "exact": true } } }, { "rank": 8, "trackKey": "the-beatles--revolution-9", "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/the-beatles--revolution-9/", "title": "Revolution 9", "artist": "The Beatles", "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/the-beatles/", "year": 1968, "label": "Apple", "isrc": null, "whyItMatters": "Tape loops and a repeated announcement, on the best-selling record in the world. However you rate it, it put twenty years of studio experiment into millions of houses at once.", "alsoOn": [ { "kind": "curator", "slug": "twice-over", "name": "Twice Over", "url": "https://waxonia.com/theme/twice-over/" } ], "links": { "spotify": { "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/The%20Beatles%20Revolution%209", "exact": false }, "youtubeMusic": { "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=SNdcFPjGsm8", "exact": true } } } ] }