Pierre Schaeffer

Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995) was a French composer, theorist, and broadcaster who founded musique concrète — the practice of composing directly with recorded sounds — at the French Radio (RTF) in Paris in 1948. His Études de bruits (1948) and the Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950, with Pierre Henry) are founding documents of electroacoustic music. He also developed a comprehensive theory of sonic objects through his Traité des objets musicaux (1966), which remains a central text in electroacoustic theory. He founded the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in 1958, which became one of the most important institutional centres for electroacoustic music globally.