Pierre Schaeffer and the Ethics of Experimental Music Research

Published March 2026 (Hardback)

first book in the series Resonances from Edinburgh University Press, edited by Chris Stover and Edward Campbell

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“– Because you are a shit, Simon.

– What did you say? says Simon, surprised.

Maybe he hadn’t heard properly? Térèse speaks very softly, like what she says hurts her mouth. This is hardly her thing.

– A shittiness, if you prefer a more … folkloric word. Your nature is like this, Simon, you have to agree.

– We are all shittinesses, then, concludes Simon, flexible and, why not, amused.

– Yes, but you won’t get out of it like that. Each person has a way of their own to be … shitty. It’s the sum of your originality, the thing you hold on to the most. And it is identification with that which is worst in you that makes your personality, at least the part you have yet to discover. Do you understand?”

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A generation of UK electroacoustic composers was brought up feeling that it owed a debt to the work and ideas of Pierre Schaeffer. Valiquet’s patient study offers forgiveness, and a hugely expanded context for understanding his contribution. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in musique concrète’s relationship with modernism, and with French cultural and political life.

–Simon Waters, SARC, Queen’s University Belfast & Orpheus Instituut, Ghent

This pathbreaking book cuts through the myths that surround musique concrète and the history of post-war experimental music. Valiquet’s holistic rethinking of Schaeffer exposes the limits of familiar narratives of rupture and liberation, and demands our engagement with the conservative, mystical, and moralizing tendencies that also drove the experimental project.

–Elaine Kelly, The University of Edinburgh