Milestone Reissue! The three discs collected here - housed in a lavish cardboard boxet (+ Includes a 116 page booklet in French and English with biographical notes, essays and program notes for each work, and a 52 page booklet with photographs) - cover the bulk of Pierre Schaeffer's concrète works, beginning with his pre-tape days when he composed using multiple turntables mixing sound effects recordings direct to lathe. The earliest recordings here were created in 1948 during Schaeffer's days as radio engineer for Radiodiffusion Française and are built from sounds ranging from locomotives and whirligigs to pots, pans, piano, and percussion. Each of those collages eventually made their way onto the air. His Suite pour 14 instruments is an amalgam of orchestral sounds rendered far beyond their original context. Where these early works clearly function as experiments for Schaeffer, once Pierre Henry joins in as his assistant, the music takes on both a playfulness and a refinement of detail that eventually became landmarks of the French approach to musique concrète. The processes became increasingly laborious, and those who once flocked to Schaeffer's studio to work in this new medium became disillusioned by the demand and patience that the work required.

CD 1: Pierre Schaeffer : Les incunables 1948-1952 with “Cinq études de bruits”, “Diapason Concertino”, “Variations sur une flûte mexicaine”, “Suite pour 14 instruments”, “L'oiseau RAI”, “Masquerage”, “Les paroles dégelées”. CD 2: Pierre Schaeffer - Pierre Henry, les oeuvres communes 1950-1953 with “Symphonie pour un homme seul”, “Bidule en ut”, “Orphée 53, Suite de concerts”. CD 3: Pierre Schaeffer, les révisions 1958-1979 with “Etude aux allures”, “Etude aux sons animés”, “Etude aux objets”, “Continuo (with Luc Ferrari)”, “Musique de scène pour Phèdre”, “Trièdre fertile”, “Bidule”