This English translation of Évelyne Gayou's 2007 French edition brings the creation myths of musique concrète and electroacoustic music to life in incredible detail. As a member of Groupe de Recherches Musicales, Gayou draws on her experiences as well as the GRM's extensive archives to document Pierre Schaeffer's innovations, those of his collaborators such as Pierre Henry and Iannis Xenakis, and the extensive output of this prolific group, whilst providing the cultural context of their developments in found sound and electronic music. The abundance of material makes this two books in one--first a thematic approach with five chapters dedicated to prehistory, style, pedagogy, audience, and writing, and secondly chronologically, starting with the group’s origins in 1948 and, then, organised by decade, 1948-58, 58-68 and so on. This makes for a weighty reference book with much of part two organised into lists of compositions, performances, recordings, broadcasts, publications, software releases, new instruments, training courses, archival practices, and other key developments. Only a brief postscript remarks that the story continues from 2007 to the present day, though a more detailed update would be interesting to read.  

The double meaning of "a revolution in music" comes into play through encounters with closed groove discs used in analogue looping and their importance to the concept of reduced listening--Schaeffer's key finding of the experience of disassociating sounds from their source material. Reduced listening and its related term, acousmatic, and the quest to move towards abstraction was key to 20th C. notions of music and listening, another being the relationship between audience and composer, addressed here through the story of the development of multi-speaker sound systems associated with acousmatic music through which composers are able to adjust the experience for listeners.  

Though this is a fact-filled history book, it is not without analysis, and Gayou's findings have implications for other cultural fields, such as her concept of arts collectives as both centripetal--drawing in--and centrifugal--sending out--ideas and practitioners as they operate. She introduces many significant terms and explains who coined them, when, where, and why. The GRM's own use of language hints at a love of order, and their subtle humour is apparent in their chosen terminology, derived from the central concept of the acousmatic: the acousmographe sound visualisation software; the acousmatheque archive; the acousmonium multi-speaker sound system, and acousmaline database.  

The inspiring and often domineering figure of Schaeffer is influential throughout the narrative, up until his death in the mid 90s. By that time access was expanding, with computers capable of music production becoming common in homes, in part thanks to the research undertaken at the GRM, meaning that the need for specific centres to undertake such work has gradually lessened. The time of writing, at the turn of the new century, has led to a 90s and 2000s emphasis at times, with more references to CD ROMs than I have seen for a while.  

Despite declaring her position as a GRM member in the introduction, Gayou takes an objective tone without personal reminiscences of work that must have been fun and exciting to be part of. A reference to "125 people--including 8 women" (p.290) who received training in the 1980s is one of the few mentions of the evident gender disparity, and feels like it may be a fairly typical ratio. This left me curious as to Gayou's experience as one of the female members of the GRM. The chronological chapters end with biographies of influential individual members, and this feels like a lost opportunity to include some women's achievements, such as her own. Overall, the role of women in experimental and electronic music is widely acknowledged elsewhere, so the omission of this context in a book that eloquently explores other social factors feels like an oversight.  

This is a minor complaint, however, and it will be interesting to see how this book is cited by other authors as it provides so much vital information about the development of musique concrète, electronic music and spatialisation, both at the GRM and associated institutes and art movements within its centripetal/centrifugal forcefield. The practice of using recorded sounds is now widespread throughout all genres of music, and it will be interesting to see how Gayou's work contributes to this discussion, as she touches only lightly on interactions with popular music, for example using the distinction "serious techno" for producers who cite Pierres Schaeffer and Henry as influential. It may be that less serious music owes more of a debt to the GRM, but also that art music owes a greater debt to popular music than is acknowledged here.  

Whilst reading, new compositional ideas came to my mind, making this a book that will inspire how music is made, understood, and written about.