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I was horrified by modern 12-tone music. I said to myself, 'Maybe I can find something different... maybe salvation, liberation, is possible.'

— Pierre Schaeffer

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Source: Pierre Schaeffer: an Interview with the Pioneer of Musique Concrete (Records Quarterly magazine, vol. 2, n° 1; 1987)
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by Pierre Schaeffer

I do not want to heap coals of fire on anyone's head, but I would like to advise those who keep the living thought of the dead hidden away in cardboard boxes, to pass on as quickly as possibly such explosive material, whose only legitimate heir is the whole world, that is to say, my neighbor.

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Music

More quotes by Pierre Schaeffer

Barbarians always think of themselves as the bringers of civilization.

Something new has been added, a new art of sound. Am I wrong in calling it music?

People who try to create a musical revolution do not have a chance, but those who turn their back to music can sometimes find it.

Sound is the vocabulary of nature... noises are as well articulated as the words in a dictionary... Opposing the world of sound is the world of music.

Take a sound from whatever source, a note on a violin, a scream, a moan, a creaking door, and there is always this symmetry between the sound basis, which is complex and has numerous characteristics which emerge through a process of comparison within our perception.

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Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

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Above the pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Pierre Schaeffer (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.