Musique Concrete Today: Its reach, evolution of concepts and role in musical thought

Musique concrete has become a well-known word and concept. The history of the concept permits us to understand how it evolved and how its inventor, Pierre Schaeffer, felt about it and its impact. The terms have gone through several transformations, the main one being that into the term acousmatique, which implied a change of perspective in the reach of the concept. Today musique concrete is an active concept, not generally applied to describe contemporary musical creation, however embedded in musical thought and theory.