PIERRE SCHAEFFER'S OBJETS MUSICAUX AND THEIR

Pierre Schaeffer's magnum opus "Traité des objets musicaux " (1) was built on a structuring and definition of the whole field of perceiving and interpreting sounds that have a meaning to the individual. He did not distinguish between musical communication and vocal communication, and it is interesting to realize that although musical theoreticians before his publication (1966) did distinguish, many practitioners, both of measurement of musical performance and of phonetics, did not distinguish. This was a phenomenon related to the availability of equipment but also to the mindset of researchers and how they delineated their respective fields. The researchers were typically linguists (phone-ticians), psychologists, or ethnomusicologists (termed comparative musicologists), and within each of these fields there was a fierce battle between those who relied on what they perceived by hearing and those who found support in measurement. The paper traces the development of the use of measurements in music studies and in phonetics and will argue that the history of this field demonstrates that Pierre Schaeffer's identification of the phenomena was useful, although he himself did not document his own approach. Schaeffer argued the inevitability of the concurrence on basic principles, and his words will not be repeated here. Of necessity it will only be possible to discuss here some instances from the now 150 years old history that he might have relied on. 1