In Schaefferian theory, Abstract and Concrete are "two isotopes
of reality", two faces of every perception, interdependent and
complementary, which must be reconciled and balanced in music,
against the excess of concrete (in musique concrète) or the
excess of abstract (in serial and other types of "a priori"
musics). When in 1948 Pierre Schaeffer gave the name Concrète to
the music which he invented, he wanted to demonstrate that this
new music started from the concrete sound material, from heard
sound, and then sought to abstract musical values from it. And
this is the opposite of classical music, which starts from an
abstract conception and notation leading to a concrete
performance. Furthermore, Schaeffer’s table in the quatre
écoutes is made by crossing horizontally and vertically the two
fundamental sets of opposites which are found in every
perceptual activity: Objective/Subjective and Abstract/Concrete.
The sound object, the correlate of reduced listening is defined
as the synthesis of an abstract goal