Brian Kane, Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice

Music Theory Online, 2015

Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice, by Brian Kane, Oxford; New York, Oxford University Press, 2014, 336 pp., £44.99 (hardback), ISBN 9780199347841 / 2016, 336 pp., £18.99 (paperback), ISBN: 9780190632212 The Order of Sounds: A Sonorous Archipelago, by François J. Bonnet, Falmouth, Urbanomic, 2016, 364 pp., £14.99 (paperback) ISBN: 9780993045875

2014

This paper will discuss acousmatic music as a simultaneously musical and narrative art form. Acousmatic narrative will be considered from the dual perspectives of the composer and the listener, and we will investigate some of the differences between these, and some of the mechanisms at play. A case will be made for the act of acousmatic composition as an ideal site for exploration and research into narrative processes. The composition and reception of the author's work Déchirure will be used as an illustrative example. Acousmatic music We should perhaps begin with a quick description of acousmatic music in general. At its simplest, acousmatic music is a form of electroacoustic tape music that often uses recordings taken from the world around us as a significant source of sound material. It begins in the 1940s and 1950s in Paris, with Pierre Schaeffer and musique concrète, before the adoption of the term 'acousmatic' by François Bayle in the 1970s (Battier 2007). For Schaeffer, the sounds of the world become musical material: any sound that can be recorded, is then edited, treated, and manipulated, until a composition is crafted from these real-world materials. Central to Schaeffer's conception was his idea of 'reduced listening' (Schaeffer 1966), a listening paradigm in which the source of a sound is deliberately ignored, in order to focus on the sonic properties and characteristics inherent to the sound. We forget about what agent, object, or action made the sound, or what the sound signifies; we focus only on the musical properties of the soundits internal rhythms, its timbres and textures, possibly some melodic elements. The argument here is that we are blinded to the musical potential of the sounds that surround us by their roles as signifiers for the objects or actions that made the sounds. If it's raining outside, we probably don't hear a beautiful percussive pattern of raindrops on the pavement outside; we only hear a signifier for 'It's raining'. This hidden musical potential is revealed once we, through a conscious act, remove the significative identities of the sounds, redefining a sound according only to its own sonic characteristics. This, then, is the key concept of musique concrète: the emancipation of sound from its source, such that works can be created that are shaped through the musical deployment of recorded sounds. This is reflected in the term 'acousmatic', which originates with Pythagoras, who would lecture his students from behind a screen on the grounds that they would be better able to focus on his words if they were not distracted by the sight of the person speaking. These students were known as the 'akusmatikoi'; hence the term 'acousmatic music', in which the loudspeaker plays a similar role to Pythagoras' screen: we can focus on the sound, without being distracted by the presence of its source. However, while the emphasis in musique concrète was initially entirely on reduced listening and on sounds of the world freed from their sources and causes, over time it became increasingly clear that, in fact, it is nearly impossible for the human mind not to ascribe, even if only unconsciously, a string of causes and sources for the sounds we hear. Reduced listening is possible, but it requires constant, wilful, active effort on the part of the listener to deliberately ignore the possible sources of the sounds being heard; even then, the extent to which these sources are really being completely ignored is debatable. So, no matter how focused the creative act of composition might be on the purely musical qualities of the sound, in practice, the listener-although also fully capable of appreciating this musical level-is almost certain to simultaneously create, perhaps unwittingly, an evolving mental image constructed from the reemergence of the role of the sounds as signifiers. While reduced listening was revolutionary in adding a further dimension to our appreciation of the sounds thus arranged, it did not succeed in erasing or negating our in-built response to sound: the automatic and instinctive linking of a given sound with a source. (Atkinson 2007) The musical/narrative duality

The word ‘acousmatic’ has a strange and complicated history. Recent Schaefferian accounts have replicated Franc ̧ ois Bayle’s sketch of the ‘histoire du mot’ from his Musique acousmatique – in particular, the assumed synonymy between ‘acousmatique’ and ‘acousmate’. However, this synonymy is mistaken. The word ‘acousmate’ was first coined in an article from 1730 to describe a strange noise heard one evening in the small French village of Ansacq. A discussion of the article follows, which shows how the word is unrelated to the Pythagorean acousmatics, and how its author understood his ‘acousmate’ in the context of contemporary natural science. Additionally, a sketch of the term’s changing signification in three discourses – scientific, psychological and literary – is presented. The goal of this article is to articulate a set of problems concerning the historiography of acousmatic listening in the Schaefferian tradition. These problems include: 1) the need to authorise a practice of musique acousmatique, which has limited historical investigation The word ‘acousmatic’ has a strange and complicated history. Recent Schaefferian accounts have replicated François Bayle’s sketch of the ‘histoire du mot’ from his Musique acousmatique – in particular, the assumed synonymy between ‘acousmatique’ and ‘acousmate’. However, this synonymy is mistaken. The word ‘acousmate’ was first coined in an article from 1730 to describe a strange noise heard one evening in the small French village of Ansacq. A discussion of the article follows, which shows how the word is unrelated to the Pythagorean acousmatics, and how its author understood his ‘acousmate’ in the context of contemporary natural science. Additionally, a sketch of the term’s changing signification in three discourses – scientific, psychological and literary – is presented. The goal of this article is to articulate a set of problems concerning the historiography of acousmatic listening in the Schaefferian tradition. These problems include: 1) the need to authorise a practice of musique acousmatique, which has limited historical investigation to moments where the word ‘acousmate’ or ‘acousmatique’ appear in the archive; 2) a mistaken assumption that ‘acousmate’ and ‘acousmatique’ are synonymous, which has forced together historical moments that are not in fact affiliated; 3) an adherence to this affiliation, which has foreclosed the opportunity to consider acousmatic listening as a set of culturally and historically specific practices concerning the relationship of seeing and hearing.

2018

Acousmatic broadly pertains to the phenomenon of hearing without being able to directly see an image of the sound's source in the real world. Energy synthesis is a term I devised for the mental or physical action of following the progression of sound's pitch and energy dispersal with hand motions. First-degree acousmatic sound is a term I devised for acousmatic sounds that are recognisable to listeners in relation to a source and can be 'seen' in the listener's mind. An example is hearing a recording of a human voice and envisioning the person singing. Material synthesis is a term I devised for the synaesthetic relationship between the perception of sound timbres and tones with analogous visual surfaces and textures. An example is hearing grainy white noise and linking this sound with a dry, coarse and gritty surface such as sandpaper. Musique Concrete is a sound composing, listening, and research discipline established by Pierre Schaeffer in Paris in the late 1940s. Musique Concrete is distinguished from other musical discourses by its use of recorded sounds that are unrecognisable to people as the subject matter for compositions. Second-degree acousmatic sound is a term I devised for recordings of sounds that are totally obscured from reality by mechanical and electronic devices and sound editing. These types of sounds are less likely to be recognised by listeners in relation to their visual context, concerning a sound source, place, and method of production. Soundscape refers to any earthly or musical environment that distinguishable sounds occur within. Soundscapes also pertain to the creative sound discipline established by Raymond Murray Schafer in the late 1960s that involves the use of or reference to recognisable sounds and sound environments as subject matter for musical composition and visual art. Sonorous Object is a term coined by Pierre Schaeffer in the late 1940's for a recorded sound that has been transformed into a new and unrecognisable sound by Musique Concrete composers. This includes editing a recording with methods such as cropping, looping, repeating, layering and changes to tempo. Structural synthesis is a term I devised for the visual representation of the pitch and dynamic envelope of sound through linear drawings or the shape of sculptures.

NOTE: A more comprehensive analysis of Schaeffer's "sound object" based on this essay appears as chapter 1 of Sound Unseen. I recommend to researchers working on Pierre Schaeffer to consult that chapter. ABSTRACT: The work of Pierre Schaeffer (theorist, composer and inventor of musique concrète) bears a complex relationship to the philosophical school of phenomenology. Although often seen as working at the periphery of this movement, this paper argues that Schaeffer’s effort to ground musical works in a ‘hybrid discipline’ is quite orthodox, modelled upon Husserl’s foundational critique of both ‘realism’ and ‘psychologism’. As part of this orthodoxy, Schaeffer develops his notion of the ‘sound object’ along essentialist (eidetic) lines. This has two consequences: first, an emphasis is placed on ‘reduced listening’ over indicative and communicative modes of listening; secondly, the ‘sound object’ promotes an ahistorical ontology of musical material and technology. Despite frequent references to Schaeffer and the ‘sound object’ in recent literature on networked music, concatenative synthesis and high-level music descriptors, the original phenomenological context in which Schaeffer’s work developed is rarely revisited. By critically exploring Schaeffer’s theorising of the ‘sound object’, this paper aims at articulating the distance between contemporary and historical usage of the term.

Organised Sound, 2019

This article proposes a conception of sound as the material of artistic experimentation. It centres on a discussion of the nature of sound’s ontological status and aims to contribute to a new understanding of the role of materiality in artistic practices. A central point of discussion is Pierre Schaeffer’s notion of the sound object, which is critically examined. The phenomenological perspective that underlies the concept of the sound object depicts sound as an ideal unity constituted by a subject’s intentionality. Thus, it can barely grasp the physicality of sounds and their production or their reality beyond individual perception. This article aims to challenge the notion of the sound object as a purely perceptual phenomenon while trying to rethink experimentation as a practical form of thought that takes place through interacting with sonorous material. Against the background of recent object-oriented and materialist philosophical theories and by drawing on the Heideggerian concept of the thing and Gilbert Simondon’s theories of perception and individuation, this article strives to outline a conception of sound as a non-symbolic otherness. The proposed idea of thingness revolves around a morphogenetic conception of the becoming of sonorous forms that links their perception to their physicality.

Cabinet, 2001