(Five Studies of Noises) is a series of five musical compositions by Pierre Schaeffer. The five études were composed in 1948 and are the earliest pieces of , a form of electroacoustic music first theorized by Schaeffer that utilizes recorded sounds as the primary compositional resource.
The five études were composed at the studio Schaeffer established at RTF (now ORTF), the in Paris. They are: – trains – toy tops and percussion instruments – piano sounds recorded for Schaeffer by Pierre Boulez – piano sounds recorded for Schaeffer by Boulez – sauce pans, canal boats, singing, speech, harmonica, piano
The works were premiered via a broadcast on 5 October 1948, titled .
In 2011, The New York Times included Étude aux chemins de fer in its history of the mashup, describing it as "[t]he first piece of musique concrète, composed from recordings of trains." Stony Brook University music professor Margaret Schedel, who writes that Schaeffer is widely regarded as the first composer to "create music with pre-recorded media", describes Étude aux chemins de fer as a sound collage with "a prominent place in most histories of electronic and computer music".
References
External links Étude aux chemins de fer at archive.org