Pierre Schaeffer & Pierre Henry – Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950)

Music history books always mention Symphonie pour un homme seul as the first major work of musique concrète, but nobody ever seems to actually listen to it.  Think about it:  when was the last time someone you know mentioned listening to this piece?  I’m assuming that everyone reading this blog is a musician and is constantly getting recommendations for all kinds of music.  But this hugely important piece goes ignored.  Why?

Having finally listened to the piece myself, I think the answer is basically that it’s badly dated.  Normally I can’t stand that word — hi, 70s analog synth lover here — but the trouble with Symphonie pour un homme seul is that the techniques it uses for manipulating sound have become so commonplace that the technological wow factor has completely disappeared. In 1950, hearing backwards pitch-shifted voices must have been revelatory;  in 2010, it’s downright mundane, and the piece doesn’t have enough formal interest, emotional content, or even suggestiveness-of-an-era to remain exciting now that its basic techniques have become old hat.  Yes, there are a few pretty inventive sections — I was especially struck by the clangy, industrial, motoric finale, “Strette,” and the pop-art flair of “Eroica,” with its juxtaposition of vocal samples and loud popping sounds — but for the most part, the piece sounds like some Elephant 6 artist’s half-assed basement side project.  I don’t hear the kind of clarity of intention here that I do in some other early electronic pieces, like Ligeti’s Artikulation (1958), Berio’s Thema – Omaggio a Joyce (1958) or Hugh LeCaine’s Dripsody (1955);  it seems like Schaeffer and Henry were mostly just excited about their new toys.  It doesn’t help that the piano samples are very poorly recorded and sound pretty much exactly like a lot of experimental 90s lo-fi. I’m thinking, for example, Home’s “Freedohm Rd.” — but that turns into a catchy song after its noodly concrète intro.  Nor does it help that the movement called “Erotica” (not to be confused with “Eroica”) is supremely, obnoxiously un-erotic, full of exaggerated cooing that reminds me more than anything else of the “ooh la la” sound effects in SimLife.  And now that I’ve made my post almost as dated as the piece, I’m going to stop writing.