(Fr.). A term rather defiantly introduced by avant-garde painters and sculptors, meaning quite literally "found objects." Marcel Duchamp was probably the first to exhibit an objet trouvé, a urinal from a men's lavatory. Man Ray exhibited a sewing machine wrapped in a piece of canvas, and Andy Warhol managed to create a sensation by selling a realistic representation of a Campbell's soup can for a reputed sum of $70,000. A plate with remnants of an unfinished dinner was exhibited as an objet trouvé, as was "bagel jewelry," an actual bagel set in a jewelry box. Found or ready-made objects are also incorporated by modern artists as part of sculpture or montage.

Ultramodern composers sometimes insert passages from works by other composers as a token of homage and partly as an experiment in construction. Such objets trouvés need not harmonize with their environment, which may be completely alien to the nature of the implant. An early example is the sudden appearance of the tune Ach, du lieber Augustin in ARNOLD SCHOENBERG'S Second String Quartet (1908).

Others make use of musical objets trouvés by the simple device of playing another composer's music. An example of an embroidered objet trouvé is LUCIANO BERIO'S Sinfonia (1968), which incorporates whole chunks of music from GUSTAV MAHLER, MAURICE RAVEL, and others.