Musique concrète (French for "concrete music") is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical" (melody, harmony, rhythm, metre and so on). The theoretical underpinnings of the aesthetic were developed by Pierre Schaeffer, beginning in the early 1940s.

In 1928 the music critic Andre Coeuroy, wrote in the Panorama of Contemporary Music that "perhaps the time is not far off when a composer will be able to represent through recording, music specifically composed for the gramophone." In the same period the American composer Henry Cowell, in referring to the projects of Nikolai Loptatnikoff, believed that "there was a wide field open for the composition of music for phonographic discs." This sentiment was echoed further in 1930 by Igor Stravinsky, when he stated in the revue Kultur und Schalplatte that "there will be a greater interest in creating music in a way that will be peculiar to the gramophone record." The following year, 1931, Boris de Schloezer also expressed the opinion that one could write for the gramophone or for the wireless just as one can for the piano or the violin (Battier 2007, 190). Shortly after, Rudolf Arnheim discussed the effects of microphonic recording in an essay entitled Radio, published in 1936. In it the idea of a creative role for the recording medium was introduced and Amheim stated that: "The rediscovery of the musicality of sound in noise and in language, and the reunification of music, noise and language in order to obtain a unity of material: that is one of the chief artistic tasks of radio" (Battier 2007, 193).

Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (ⁱ/piːˈɛər ˈhɛnriː məˈriː ˈʃeɪfər/; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician of the 20th century. His innovative work in both the sciences —particularly communications and acoustics— and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end of World War II, as well as his anti-nuclear activism and cultural criticism garnered him widespread recognition in his lifetime.

Amongst the vast range of works and projects he undertook, Schaeffer is most widely and currently recognized for his accomplishments in electronic and experimental music, at the core of which stands his role as the chief developer of a unique and early form of avant-garde music known as musique concrète. The genre emerged out of Europe from the utilization of new music technology developed in the post-Nazi Germany era, following the advance of electroacoustic and acousmatic music.

Schaeffer's writings (which include written and radio-narrated essays, biographies, short novels, a number of musical treatises and several plays) are often oriented towards his development of the genre, as well as the theoretics and philosophy of music in general.

Jan Boerman was born in The Hague on June 30, 1923. He has been in electronic music studios since 1959. The Delft Polytechnic in Utrecht, from which the world-famous Institute of Sonology was developed, housed the first electronic music studio in Holland after the Philips laboratory in Eindhoven, which was not generally open to composers.

A select few composers were invited to work at Eindhoven, including Edgard Varèse (who created his Poème électronique there in 1958), but by 1960, Philips decided to close the facilities. It generously passed its equipment on to the Delft Polytechnic, which quickly became the primary site for electronic music in the Netherlands. Administrative problems, however, caused both Jan Boerman and Dick Raaijmakers to leave Utrecht in 1963, whereupon they began setting up a private studio in the Hague. Their facility eventually became incorporated into the Royal Conservatory of Music, and both men became members of the faculty. (Many years later, in 1986, the Institute of Sonology echoed their move by transferring from Utrecht to the Royal Conservatory in the Hague.)