found music

English

Noun

found music (uncountable)

1. Music created by taking natural or non-musical (non-instrumental/non-singing) sounds and combining them into, or as, a musical composition.
   • 1995, Ciaran Carty, Confessions of a Sewer Rat: A Personal History of Censorship & the Irish Cinema, →ISBN:

     Undaunted, Quinn has just finished a movie on stone carving in collaboration with the composer Roger Doyle, who specialises in found music. "I wanted to define prosaic images with strange and unusual sounds."

   • 2005, John Robert Colombo, All the poems of John Robert Colombo:

     French leadership in found literature has shifted to found music, musique concrete, in which natural sounds are introduced into musical compositions, often to the exclusion of traditional instrumentation.

   • 2017, Judith Mackrell, The Unfinished Palazzo: Life, Love and Art in Venice: The Stories of Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse and Peggy Guggenheim, Thames & Hudson, →ISBN:

     It was nearly two decades since the composer had attended Peggy's New York parties and been awed by the stature of her guests. Now he was becoming eminent in his own right, his Duchamp-inspired experiments in found music and his signature silent score 4' 33" gaining recognition as milestone achievements of the international avant-garde.