Musique concrete treats any recorded sound as a composable 'sound object' independent of notation

Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrete, developed in the 1940s, is built on using recorded material itself as content — recordings of instruments, voices, electronics, or ambience are all fair game. This established the idea of the sound object (l’objet sonore): a fixed recorded sound treated as a compositional unit in its own right, distinct from the abstract idea of musical notation. Composing therefore becomes the arranging and transforming of concrete recorded sounds rather than the writing of notes to be performed, a conceptual shift that underlies sampling, field recording, and electroacoustic composition.

Examples

A recorded train or door-slam edited and layered as a musical element; sampling a drum break as a sound object rather than transcribing and replaying it.

Assessment

Define the ‘sound object’ in musique concrete and explain how it differs from composing with musical notation.