Acousmatique .Com - History of Electro-Acoustic Music by John McEvilly

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Dissertation: History of Electro-Acoustic Music by John McEvilly, published by Acousmatique.com copyright 1999 by QUB-John McEvily. All rights reserved.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following for their invaluable help:
Professor Jan Smaczny for his constant advice and encouragement throughout my course of studies.
Dr. Michael Alcorn for his valuable information on numerous topics.
Annette Vande Gorne, Jonty Harrison, Pierre Couprie, Douglas Doherty and Kevin Austin for their generous responses to questions posed via the Canadian Electroacoustic Discussion List.
Finally, my parents whose support made the completion of this study possible.
John McEvilly.
Source:John McEvilly's MA dissertation as a double module for the degree of MA in Music Technology at the Queens University of Belfast.
Copyright by Queens University and John McEvilly. All rights reserved.
1.0 Introduction
'Music, in the harmonic sense of the word, has now attained its limit. The composer of the twentieth century will not go beyond it. We must wait at least two hundred years for a renewal in this direction. On the other hand, the other elements of music (especially rhythmic ones which have been forgotten for so long: duration, timbre, attack, intensity) are now restored to a position of honour. [1]
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From many points of view Messiaens apocalyptic opinions concerning the fate of music appear particularly relevant to the eld of electroacoustic music. [2] The disintegration of traditional tonal harmony as a prime structural agent precipitated an increasing reliance on other musical elements. To extend slightly Messiaens statement; timbre, rhythm, duration, attack and intensity are now accorded more signicance in many branches of modern composition than are melody and tonal harmony. The restoration of these elements to their 'position of honour, as Messiaen terms it, has been impelled partly by technological advance. However, the impact of technology on modern music has resulted in much more than a mere emphasis on apparently neglected musical elements. The facility to record sound has offered the modern composer: '...an acoustic palette as wide as that of the environment itself. [3] The materials available to the composer may now extend beyond what has been conventionally understood as musical. Sounds of everyday life may be presented as part of, or even as, a musical work. This raises many important questions about both composition and reception of the musical work in modern music.
The breakdown of tonality, the increasing primacy of timbre and the inclusion of what might be considered traditionally, and socially, 'un-musical' materials are issues of vital importance in the practice and historiography of contemporary music as a whole and electroacoustic music in particular. This study will consider these issues; all of which are central to the composition, performance and reception of electroacoustic music. Attention will focus on electroacoustic music in the tape medium as this represents, in many respects, the most undiluted form of the genre. Chapter 1 examines electroacoustic terminology, a useful starting point since it provides a context for a more detailed examination of issues in later chapters. The various terms employed to describe electroacoustic music are evaluated on the basis of their success in representing the methods and intentions of composers and the response of listeners. Chapter 2 considers the composition of electroacoustic music; the range of materials and language available to the composer is discussed as is the freedom of the composer to choose from a vastly expanded array of musical materials. Chapter 3 is concerned with the reception of electroacoustic music on tape. Differences in listening behaviour between listeners and composers are discussed in relation to the extent they contribute to problems of reception. Materials and language are revisited as it is attempted to explore the affect materials themselves have on reception. Finally, the way listeners perceive an electroacoustic work is explored and the impact this may have on composition is evaluated.
1.1 A Brief Survey of Electroacoustic Terminology
1.1.0 A categorisation of electroacoustic terms
An interesting exercise when examining electroacoustic music is the surveying of the terminology its composers use to dene and describe the eld within which they work. Different descriptions may reveal something of the language, materials or technology involved in composing and listening to electroacoustic music. The need for an adequate descriptive metalanguage was, and still is, important for a medium that purports to be a complete break with traditional musical practice. While not attempting to overemphasise the signicance of terminology, descriptive labels can reveal the different aesthetic directions taken by composers. Another important property of terminology is an inevitable historical association and the implications for any historiographic study of the subject. Thus, a brief survey of the major terms employed will, in effect, identify signicant developments in electroacoustic music since 1948.
A common-sense approach to the categorisation of electroacoustic terminology is provided by Annette Vande Gorne in her article Les mots pour le dire. [4] She places terms in three different categories as follows:
1. Historical/Aesthetic Musique concrte, Electronic, Organised Sound, Experimental, Electroacoustic, Audio Art, Acousmatic.
2. Instrumental Tape Music, Computer Music, Mixed Music, Live Electronics, Interactive music, Multimedia.
3. Genre Abstract: tudes, suites.
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Figurative: Film, Ballet music, 'Soundscape', Environmental music, Cinema for the Ear, Music with text (melodrama Historical Genres: Cantata, Mass, Opera.
[5] radiophonic)
1.1.1 Aesthetic/Historical
Vande Gorne's rst category includes terms that provide a logical starting point when discussing electroacoustic terminology. In the late 1990s, terms such as Musique concrte and Elektronische Musik are almost entirely historical in their signicance. The Musique concrte and Elektronische Musik schools, in Paris and Cologne respectively, represented the tangible beginnings of electroacoustic music. [6] These schools came into existence during a period of extreme reaction to the western art music tradition. These were idealistic times, the horrors of the second World War having had the most negative of impacts on the western musical tradition. Composers of this era, such as Stockhausen and Schaeffer, felt compelled to create music by and from new means. This involved a rejection of traditional musical values in favour of more experimental and avant-garde approaches to composition. Stockhausen compared the state of music at the middle of the century to the condition of post-war Germany:
The cities are razed, we must rebuild music from the ground up.
[7]
This modernist agenda found its spiritual home at the composition summer school which met at Darmstadt. [8] Advances in technology, as a result of the war, also added impetus to these radical changes in aesthetic. The facility to create and reproduce sound by electrical means offered the possibility to circumvent traditional musical practice. Musique concrte and Elektronische Musik thus represented an ideal means of achieving a complete break with the past.
At the dawn of this new medium aesthetic and technique were bound together to an extremely high degree - largely as a result of the huge technical limitations facing early pioneers. In many ways the basic technology of this era dictated compositional practice. Schaeffers Musique concrte was initially realised by the physical manipulation of source recordings encoded on wax disc. The bond with this recording medium became so close that: '...the introduction of the tape recorder was viewed with considerable misgivings.. [9] The tape recorder, as with any advance in technology, offered more sophisticated facilities and greater ease of use. This heightened sophistication resulted in new techniques that challenged a compositional theory based on simple manipulations of microphone recordings. In Cologne, the use of a sine-tone generator not only suggested, but demanded a different compositional practice. This technology was ideal for the extension of the serialist technique into the realm of timbre; just as the twelve chromatic tones could be organised into tone rows, now, by electronic means, timbre could be created and controlled by the addition and subtraction of sine waves - the most basic physical constituent of sound.
Musique concrte may be dened simply as music composed by the manipulation of microphone recordings of natural sound. However, for Pierre Schaeffer, the instigator of Musique concrte in Paris, the term also described not only the recording of sound but also the method of composition. Musique concrte represented a complete reversal in compositional technique from traditional practice. The composer now began with the concrete (the recorded sound) and proceeded to the abstract (musical structures). [10] Any recorded sound could be used in composition; Schaeffer termed the recorded sound 'lobjet sonore (sound object). To understand how a composer could achieve musical structures using this working method it is necessary to explain Schaeffers other major conception - 'coute reduite' (reduced listening). Schaeffer insisted that new listening procedures were imperative for Musique concrte. He proposed 'coute rduite' in which the listener would focus on the internal structure of sounds divorced from social context. This involved the listener removing 'lobjet sonore from its perceived social context and listening in an abstract 'musical way to the acoustic properties of sounds, i.e. amplitude envelope, density, mass etc. This was to be of limited success as it proved impossible for listeners, with all their accumulated cultural baggage, to listen in an abstract way purely because a sound had been recorded thereby removing it from its conventional association. Associative or referential listening was and still is an inescapable feature of many listeners intentions when receiving this music. This issue will be returned to during Chapter 3 in a discussion concerning the reception and criticism of electroacoustic tape music.
The technology and aesthetic of Elektronische Musik offer a stark contrast to that of Musique concrte. Music at the Cologne studio was created by synthesising sound from rst principles. This was achieved primarily by Sine-Tone generators. [11] Cologne composers, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Herbert Eimert, were of the view that a pure electronic serialism would create a new music completely unrelated to traditional forms and timbres. Eimert, in particular, saw no reason in creating timbres that would imitate 'natural or instrumental sounds; instead he sought to effect a musical syntax based on completely new timbres. In this new electronic medium timbral and spatial aspects of composition could be controlled by serial procedures to an extraordinarily high degree. Stockhausen's early electronic works, Studie 1 and Studie 2, use serial procedures to control timbre and timbral progressions. In Studie 2 Stockhausen employed serial procedures to control spatial considerations of timbre. Sound
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reverberation was treated as an integral constituent of timbre and was thus subject to serial control similar to that applied to any other musical parameter. However, the attempt to create completely 'new timbres was also a failure. The sound world of Stockhausens early Cologne studies were strongly associated with bell-like timbres.
Stockhausen's Gesang der Jnglinge (1955-56), created some four years after the inception of the Darmstadt school, is a seminal work in the electroacoustic repertoire. It managed to blur the distinction between Musique concrte and Elektronische Musik by integrating the natural sound of a boy's voice with synthesised materials. However, as Emmerson (1981) rightly points out, the signicance of Gesang der Jnglinge has been misinterpreted. [12] The generally held view of various authors is that the Cologne and Paris schools converged in Gesang der Jnglinge. [13] This is an overly convenient interpretation. The reality was that, in Gesang, Stockhausen was still employing serial procedures to organise musical materials - a method that was complete anathema to the more perceptually oriented proponents of Musique concrte. One has only to remember Schaeffer's dictum 'Primaut de loreille!(Primacy to the Ear!) to understand that from a creative perspective the schools had not converged as a result of the highly calculated structural basis of Gesang. The use of serialist procedures was still traditional in essence because its application of abstract ideas to the medium was closely analogous to conventional modernist composition. The concrte method of composition was in marked contrast with normal practice of a composer starting with the abstract (idea) which is written in a score and then realised in performance by musicians. In many ways the music of Cologne could be interpreted as being an extension of this musical tradition as it was still based on a serialist methods. For concrte musicians, whose working method brought the composer in direct contact with musical materials, this was unacceptable. Schaeffer advocated an approach to composition that was based on '... the potential for evolution of the ear, and at the same time the limits, for all new music stems from the resources of the ear. [14] He elaborated this idea by expressing a preference for real acoustical sources over exclusively electronic sounds. His reasoning was based on the reality that our ears had been conditioned by our experiences to respond to natural sounds.
While Gesang der Jnglinge did not represent a real convergence of compositional method it exposed the fact that it was increasingly difcult to continue with terms such as Musique concrte and Elektronische Musik. Most historical sources regard Gesang der Jnglinge as the rst 'electroacoustic' work. [15] This label was one of convenience purely because the work did not t easily into either of the above categories. Since then, this more generic term has come into widespread use. [16] As the medium has developed from the extremities of the early schools this term has proved to have many benets, the chief being that it does not make a distinction between the origin of sounds whether natural or synthetic. Attention is drawn to the perception of sound as part of the listening process instead of the means by which the sounds are produced. [17] However, despite a widespread approval of the term in electroacoustic circles, Manning points out various difculties. Electroacoustic is a term of French origin. This presents difculties to English speakers since it is not in general musical or even colloquial usage, unlike terms such as 'electronic and 'computer. The term suggests to the listening public that the medium is litist and esoteric. Concern about the use of the term has even been raised by composers within the medium. Francis Dhomont is particularly critical:
This single term has come to designate an innite number of sound realisations with little in common aside from their reliance on electricity.
[18]
He also cites Michel Chions criticism of the term:
The term electroacoustic music has expanded to such a degree that it has become a meaningless catch-all.
[19]
Dhomont is concerned the term reveals little of what we may expect to hear, and its use is simply analogous to the use of acoustic music to dene the entire traditional repertoire.
These difculties with the epithet 'electroacoustic music' were partly responsible for the creation of a more specic term. In 1974, the composer Franois Bayle, used the term 'acousmatic music' to differentiate his work in the tape medium from real-time electronic performance. Bayles 'acousmatic music was employed to dene a specic type of music that was 'shot and developed in the studio, projected in halls, like cinema'. Acousmatic derives from the Greek, akousma, a word pertaining to auditory perception. [20] It was originally used by Pythagoras to describe the manner in which he delivered his lectures. Pythagoras stood behind a black curtain so that his students could only hear the content of his lecture the source was unseen. In doing this Pythagoras forced his listeners to concentrate their mental faculties on the content of his lecture. At the beginning of the century another denition is provided in the French dictionary Le Larousse pour tous:
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Acousmate. n. (from the Greek Akousma, what is heard). Imaginary sound, or of which the cause is not seen.
[21]
The term was revived in the 1950's by the writer Jrme Peignot to dene 'lobjet sonore' or the sound object. Peignot used acousmatic to mean 'a sound that we can hear without knowing its cause' and to designate 'the distance that separates a sound from its origins'. [22] Bayle's use of the term acousmatic not only describes the medium, i.e. tape only, but also reveals common aesthetic intentions of many composers involved in the medium. Since the term has come into existence a stylistic association has developed between composers from different countries who write mainly for tape. These composers comprise those at the GRM studios Paris, the French Quebecois school e.g. Francis Dhomont, Robert Normandeau, etc., several British composers, e.g. Jonty Harrison, Denis Smalley, etc. and the Belgian school of Annette Vande Gorne.
1.1.2 Instrumental
The term 'Electronic music', in contrast to the more specic Cologne denition, is one that also has had widespread usage and approval. Otto Luenings denition of the term is comprehensive:
Electronic music is a generic term describing music that uses electronically generated sound or sound modied by electronic means, which may or may not be accompanied by live voices or musical instruments, and which may be delivered live or through speakers. [23]
This denition is useful in that it covers the wide variety of genres that exist within the electronic medium. Luening's denition falls into Vande Gorne's second category, that of 'Instrumental' terms. Terms in her 'Instrumental' category are applicable when exploring Luening's denition. Tape music and real-time performance represent the two main modes of expression. These are far from independent genres and often exist side by side in musical compositions. Tape music, the original genre, i.e.Musique concrte, creates music by recording and manipulating sounds on tape. Real-time performance involves the modication of live or transcribed natural sounds and/or the use of pre-recorded material. [24] Luenings denition also poses certain problems. In making a distinction between natural and synthetic materials, and describing electroacoustic music by its means of transmission, the perceptual qualities of sound, as experienced through listening, are not addressed. 'Computer music' also faces similar disadvantages. This term has also become another convenient and meaningless umbrella label for every form or genre in the medium.
1.1.3 Genre
Vande Gornes nal category is that of genre. The terms relevant to this study are 'Cinma pour loreille (Cinema for the Ear) and Radiophonic. These are specic genres within the tape medium pointing to different compositional trends within the electroacoustic eld. 'Cinma pour loreille is a particular acousmatic genre that places emphasis on the use of everyday or recognisable sounds which may or may not be transformed in the studio. These sounds can be used as symbols, as metaphors if the piece is more narrative or can have an abstract function in a more traditionally 'musical discourse. [25] Ambiguity of the senses is a frequent feature of this genre. Certain works of the Qubecois composer Robert Normandeau exhibit this ambiguity in which sound objects may be regarded simultaneously as 'everyday or appreciated in an abstract musical manner, for example works such as Rumeurs, Place de Ransbeck and Tangram. This form of composition resonates with the Kantian Ding an Sich. [26] Kant believed that we can only know things as they appear to us, not as they are in themselves. The ambiguity of acousmatic genres such as 'Cinma pour loreille play on our ability to know or appear to know things.
Radiophonic works comprise another genre which has extremely close ties with Musique concrte and acousmatic music. There is a uid frontier between creative radio and the aforementioned genres. The same techniques (montage) and resources are used in a range of expressions specic to radio. This can be experienced in Hrspiel (Kagel, Ferrari), the work of Farabet and Yann Paranthon for Radio France and nally, Diane Maheux and Francis Dhomont for Radio-Canada. This concludes a brief survey of the major terms employed within the electroacoustic medium. It is hoped a context has now been established which aids the following discussion concerning the composition and reception of electroacoustic tape music in the following chapters.
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2.0 Introduction
'The situation of composition today is marked by a dimension of freedom we have never had before. The composer's freedom as regards selection and structuring of musical elements means freedom to choose. The aesthetic eld is in theory wide open.1
Hller's comments have a particular resonance for the composition of electroacoustic music. The new freedom in composition, inuenced signicantly by technology, has forced composers to dene, ab initio, their own materials and language. This contrasts sharply with much of the Western Art Music tradition in which composers worked within, to a greater or lesser degree, a lingua franca.. Paradoxically, the freedom contemporary composers enjoy today may be viewed as a natural extension of the Romantic aesthetic. The cult of the composer, his veneration as genius or spiritual hero are Romantic ideas that created an artistic climate in which the composer was expected to cultivate greater freedom of expression.2 Today, this freedom of expression may extend beyond shared social and cultural understandings of the terms 'music' and 'musical'. This is not an ideal state of affairs. While technology has brought certain freedoms it has also placed the extraordinary demand on composers of dening their own language. T.W. Adorno suggests that these demands, which result in a disjunction between composer and audience, may be understood in cultural terms:
Radical music, from its inception, reacted to the commercial depravity of the traditional idiom. It formulated an antithesis against the extension of the culture industry into its own domain.3
Electroacoustic music may be considered 'radical music in Adornos terms. It lies at the extremes of new music as its: '...material laws seem to preclude the subjective intervention of the composer, just as they preclude that of the interpreter.4 Adorno suggests that the essence of 'radical music' lies in its self-exclusion from mass commercialisation. This proposal appears to hold some truth but is not entirely satisfactory. Adorno perceives 'radical music' as a 'reaction' to commercialisation. While this 'reaction' may be audible in the 'experimental' sound of much contemporary music, it is not certain that the motivating factor for musical creativity is purely the 'commercial depravity of the traditional idiom.' The role of technology, and more specically, the facility to record and manipulate sound, may be a far more signicant catalyst in the creative process. With the help of technology the composer now possesses the means, in theory, to employ all humanly perceivable sound. These possibilities provide the opportunity for composers to push music beyond traditional denitions. As Hller has stated, the aesthetic eld is, in theory, wide open.
This chapter is concerned with the composition of electroacoustic music on tape.5 The tape medium represents the purest form of electroacoustic music and raises issues that are viewed as relevant to both the medium itself and contemporary music in general. In many ways electroacoustic music is '... aesthetically a laboratory for musical problems ...'.6 This 'laboratory' has highlighted issues of language and materials that are relevant for nearly all contemporary composers - including those who write in more traditional media. This chapter will comprise two parts: the rst will explore the new musical materials available to electroacoustic composers by making reference to the search for new materials in the period c.1900-1945; the second part will examine how a musical language may develop from these materials in the tape medium.
2.1 Materials
2.1.1 Introduction
The facility to record sound offers the electroacoustic composer '...an acoustic palette as wide as that of the environment itself.'7 Any sound can be stored on a xed medium through the recording process, (Michel Chion has described this phenomenon as 'sono-xation').8 This advance in technology challenges the primacy of materials that have been traditionally perceived as 'musical. Electroacoustic tape music may include not only pitched (periodic sound) materials but also noise (aperiodic sound).9 The use of noise, as musical material, deserves more attention. 'Un-musical', noise sounds are very often the previously experienced sounds of everyday life. The sounds of cars, planes, trains and other common environmental
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phenomena provide 'musical' material for many composers in the medium. An aesthetic background for this expansion in musical materials may be traced to the period c.1910-1945. The Futurist movement and composers such as Edgar Varse and John Cage represent a current of thought characterised by the search for new materials and modes of expression aided by an ever-evolving technology.
2.1.2 The Futurists
The Futurist movement never produced a musical work as such but provided instead a body of writing that articulated a radical musical aesthetic.10 The most relevant publication for electroacoustic composers was The Art of Noises (1911) by Luigi Russolo. It proposed composition based on the use of natural sounds from the environment:
Musical sound is too limited in qualitative variety of timbre...we must break out of this narrow circle of pure musical sounds and conquer the innite variety of noise sounds.11
Russolo's comments are signicant for the importance they attach to the use of noise as musical material and the way in which they pregure the work of Pierre Schaeffers Musique concrte. However, in practical terms, the ideas of the Futurists were a failure. Two concerts were staged in 1913 and 1914, both in Milan, on instruments specially developed by the movement.12 They met with little success but the signicance of the Futurist movement does not lie in its practical legacy. Far more important was their challenge to traditional modes of musical thought; the prominence they gave to the relationship between the laws of acoustics and the art of music. This challenge resonates strongly with Adornos theories on new music. His two extremes in modern music, that of 'emancipated expressiveness (a Romantic inheritance) and technology (in the practice of electronic music), may be seen as unied in the aesthetic of the Futurist movement.13 The connection of new technology and greater freedom of expression in musical materials became a more realistic possibility as a result of the Futurist movement.
2.1.3 Edgar Varse
The pioneering work of the French composer, Edgar Varse (1883-1965), an iconic gure in the development of electroacoustic music, anticipated and promoted many aesthetic and technical developments in the pre-war era. Varse expressed dissatisfaction with conventional instrumental resources and searched for new means of expression. In contrast to the Futurists he produced musical works that explored rhythm and timbre in a genuinely new way. Ionisation (1931), in particular, is a striking example of this new music. It is scored almost entirely for unpitched instruments with denite pitches only making an appearance in the nal 17 bars of the work. Even when pitch material is introduced it is not in the traditional, tonal sense. Pitch is strongly identied as a constituent of timbre, taking the form of repeated piano clusters and three chords which are distributed between piano, glockenspiel and tubular bells. The sound world of Ionisation and Varse's other pre-war orchestral works led Olivier Messiaen to herald him as a composer who wrote electronic music before it existed.14 Varse preferred to dene music as 'organised sound', a term that characterises his liberal attitude towards possible musical material. He also had a rather enigmatic way of expressing his musical intentions and stated his desire for new means of expression as early as 1922:
...what we want is an instrument that will give continuous sound at any pitch. The composer and electrician will have to labour together to get it .... Speed and synthesis are characteristics of our own epoch.15
However, it was not possible for Varse to write the music he desired because of inadequate technology in the pre-war years. During the twenties and thirties he attempted to establish a scientic laboratory that would explore sound and thus create new means of expression. Unfortunately these
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attempts proved fruitless due to a combination of factors, the most important being the severe economic depression the United States suffered during this period. 2.1.4 John Cage
The nal major gure of signicance to the development of electroacoustic music considered here is John Cage (1912-1992). His comments are particularly relevant when discussing the materials employed in electroacoustic music. In 1937 he stated:
I believe that the use of noise... to make noise... will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments... which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard.... Whereas in the past, the point of disagreement has been between dissonance and consonance, it will be, in the immediate future between noise and so-called musical sounds.16
Cage, in many ways, anticipated questions concerning the relationship of language to materials. The boundaries of debate would be culturally dened (noise and so-called musical material) and not only internally 'musical' (consonance and dissonance). Cage was questioning the very essence of music itself by highlighting the reality that it would soon be possible to capture and manipulate any sound. This meant the validity of traditional conceptions of material were open to challenge. However, it was not until after the second World War, and the arrival of the recording process, that this debate became a reality for early pioneers in the electronic medium.
2.2 Language
2.2.1 Compositional method and Musique concrte
The impact of technology is clearly evident in the composition of electroacoustic tape music: sound is recorded and/or synthesised and then manipulated to create musical structures directly. The composer interacts with musical material in a concrete fashion. Harrison emphasises that this new relationship of composer and material is a dimension of Schaeffer's Musique concrte often ignored in the English-speaking world:
Among English speakers, the term Musique concrte, has usually been taken to mean only that the sounds used were 'real, recorded from acoustic sources via microphone...In the French-speaking world...it is widely understood that a further dimension of what was 'concrete about Musique concrte was also the working method employed.17
Francis Dhomont articulates the Schaefferian method of composition in the following comments:
This original compositional method begins with the concrete (pure sound matter) and proceeds towards the abstract (musical structures) - hence the name Musique concrte - in reverse of what takes place in instrumental writing, where one starts with concepts (abstract) and ends with performance (concrete).18
It is clear from Dhomonts outline that aural perception assumes great signicance not only by those who regard their music as descended from Schaeffer but also electroacoustic music as a whole. Irrespective of particular schools of electroacoustic composition, the notation of musical ideas on paper by the composer, may be, and often is, completely by-passed as materials are approached by composers in a more concrete way based on perceptual criteria. The increased importance of the immediacy of the ear has been evident since the beginning of the medium. One has only to remember Schaeffer's rst postulate for the creation of Musique concrte: Primaut de l'oreille!, (Primacy to the ear!).19 The ear is elevated to a position of honour as tape music is constructed more perceptually than music of the past. Harrison reinforces this view in the following comments:
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The arbiter of this process is the ear, the composer engaging in a feedback loop with the material and the contexts in which it is placed at every stage...If something 'works or 'sounds right it needs no further justication in that musical context, as the compositional speculation has been proved experimentally (experientially, perceptually).20
These comments are central to the composition and development of languages of electroacoustic musical discourse. The medium itself demands a working method which insures that the composer experiences his/her music in a concrete way. Another feature of this music is that 'out-of-time analysis, as with written scores, is impossible. Aural perception becomes the highest authority and functions to dismantle the trend to view analysis as the inverse of composition.
Schaeffer's other great cry was Recherche d'un langage!, (Search for a language!).21 He stressed that new musical structures must insure communication between composer and listener. The nature of the medium itself presents its own challenges to composers striving for a coherent musical language. The electroacoustic tape medium forces a new listening experience which in turn demands new compositional practices. This listening environment is now one of sounds whose source is unseen. Performers are not required to realise, through interpretation of a score, a piece of music. Instead, a work exists on xed media presented via loudspeakers. It is also possible to consider various computer data and graphic representations, which result from the technology employed in composition, of electroacoustic works as being analogous to traditional scores. However, while this type of data is intrinsic to the creation of an electroacoustic musical work it is not required for musical performance.
2.2.2 Languages of Electroacoustic Music
The focus of this chapter is the composition of electroacoustic music on tape. To this end a useful guide to the variety of discourse possible within the medium is provided by Simon Emmerson in his article, 'The Relation of Language to Materials.22 Emmerson outlines two poles of musical discourse, mimetic and aural. The term 'mimesis is used to describe not only the imitation of nature but also the traditionally, 'un-musical material employed in electroacoustic tape music. 'Mimesis is further divided into two types - 'timbral and 'syntactic mimesis: 1)'timbral mimesis being a direct imitation of the timbre ('colour) of the natural sound and 2) 'syntactic mimesis may imitate the relationships between natural events e.g. speech rhythms. Both types of mimesis have been variously combined in 'programme music or in the programmatic elements of traditional musical composition.
The use of natural sounds increases the possibility that they may sound imitative which in turn threatens traditional distinctions between 'musical and 'un-musical sounds; Emmerson elaborates on what is perhaps the most signicant quality of the medium in the following comments:
It is at this point that the composer must take into account audience response; he may intend the listener to forget or ignore the origins of the sounds yet fail in his aim...The listener is confronted with two conicting arguments: the more abstract musical discourse (intended by the composer) of interacting sounds and their patterns, and the almost cinematic stream of images of real objects being, hit, scraped or otherwise being set in motion. This duality is not new...24
Emmerson provides evidence supporting his opinion that this duality is not a recent phenomenon by using the example of the argument that Berliozs Symphonie Fantastique is a better work than Beethovens Battle Symphony, because the Berlioz has more 'abstract musical substance which achieves a better balance with its programme (mimetic content). This evidence plus the comments in the cited quotation lead him to dene 'aural discourse separately from 'mimetic discourse while concluding that the two combine to comprise the entirety of 'musical discourse. Emmerson qualies this distinction in approaches to language by admitting that 'mimetic and 'aural ' discourse never exist in ideal forms. These approaches create a continuum of possibilities between two poles: at one extreme, mimetic discourse is the dominant aspect in perception; at the other extreme, perception remains quite independent of much direct mimetic interpretation.
With the designation of two overlapping and interdependent modes of discourse established, Emmerson proceeds to dene methods of creating musical syntax in the medium. Again two poles are identied; these are termed 'abstract and 'abstracted syntax. The syntax of a work on tape may be 'abstracted from the materials in some way, whether through 'reduced listening e.g. Musique concrte, or through attention to the organisation of sounds in the environment (for example the environmental compositions of Luc Ferrari and Claude Schryer). Alternatively, a syntax can be
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independently imposed upon sounds in an abstract manner as, for example, by the use of serial techniques in Elektronische Musik.
Using these two sets of oppositions as a framework, i.e. 'aural and 'mimetic discourse and 'abstract and 'abstracted syntax, Emmerson analyses a selection of works in the tape medium. Those works in which a mimetic discourse is dominant include Presque Rien, No.1 by Luc Ferrari and Trevor Wisharts Red Bird: Diary of a Political Prisoner. Ferraris work consists of natural sounds recorded on a beach during the course of a day which are minimally edited and reduced in duration to about fteen minutes. This syntax is understood to be abstracted from the materials. Red Bird, whose narrative syntax attempts to capture the intense emotional turmoil of a political prisoner is imposed on materials strong in mimetic qualities, is regarded as an abstract syntax. Works in which an aural discourse is dominant include those realised at the GRM studios in Paris by composers such as Ivo Malec, Franois Bayle and Denis Smalley, and Stockhausens early Cologne works. Smalleys Pentes is cited as an example of how a predominately aural discourse may be abstracted from the materials themselves; in this case the sound of Northumbrian pipes and percussive instruments. This contrasts sharply with the aforementioned early electronic studies of Stockhausen in which 'abstract serial procedures are imposed on the musical material also with the intention of creating a purely 'aural discourse.
However, difculties with Emmersons approach become more pronounced when an attempt is made to designate works as a combination of aural and mimetic discourse which are created from an abstract and/or abstracted syntax. Examples provided by Emmerson include works such as Dedans-Dehors by Bernard Parmegiani, Dreamsong by Michael Mc Nabb and La Fabrica Illuminata by Luigi Nono. These diverse works do not t neatly into Emmersons aural/mimetic, abstract/abstracted combination of categories; they are an extremely complex mixture of disparate sounds, methods and agendas. One has to admire Emmersons attempt to rene the initially crude distinction between aural and mimetic discourse by considering whether the creation of a works syntax is abstract and/or abstracted from the materials. However, his acknowledgement that aural and mimetic discourse do not exist in pure forms - the reality of human perception - means a degree of ambiguity already exists within these categories. The nature of this ambiguity in terms of perception, and not compositional techniques and intentions, needs to be addressed before creating further categories derived from his original postulation.
The emphasis in Emmersons analyses is upon the extent compositional methods may be understood in relation to the materials employed. However, as Windsor (1995) rightly points out:
...although Emmerson stresses the role of perception in dening whether syntax may be abstract or abstracted, and discourse mimetic or aural, his analysis remains rmly in the realm of function as opposed to perception.25
Emmersons analysis of electroacoustic tape works, while illuminating from a compositional perspective, tell little of the way a work may be perceived by the listener. An aural discourse intended by the composer may just as easily be perceived 'mimetically by the listener; equally, a mimetic discourse may be perceived 'aurally. This paradox may be understood in a case in which a 'narrative structure may be perceived by the listener whether or not serial procedures are used to organise the material, while the imposition of a 'narrative structure by a composer arguably depends on connecting with the shared cultural and social experiences of the composers audience.26 These issues of perception, highlighted by Emmersons efforts at a survey of compositional practice, lead neatly to the following chapter concerning the reception and criticism of electroacoustic tape music.
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3.0
Introduction
'Collective perception is the basis of musical objectication itself, and when this latter is no longer possible, it is necessarily degraded almost to a ction - to the arrogance of the aesthetic subject, which says we while in reality it is still only I - and this I can say nothing at all without positing the we.1
Adornos comments, concerning the chasm separating modern instrumental music from its audience, are equally pertinent to the reception and criticism of electroacoustic tape music. 'Collective perception, the bond (for want of a better description) between the composer and the listening public has been eroded by a considerable amount of electroacoustic music. The materials and languages employed by many composers in the medium, and even the physical nature of the medium itself, confronts traditional musical aesthetics with new issues. As has been already stated, a lingua franca does not exist and composers must dene their own musical language from all sound - musical or extra-musical. The greatly extended array of musical materials available to electroacoustic composers only serves to emphasise the split between the 'I and 'we which Adorno originally identied in the case of Schoenbergs serialism.2 'Collective perception in the tape medium, from which 'musical objectication can occur, appears to revolve around the primacy of mimetic interpretation by listeners over more abstract musical concerns. An exploration of the challenges that emanate from this 'I and 'we - the relationship between a work of art and the listener - will attempt to examine the barriers towards 'musical objectication associated with music in the medium.
3.1
Composition and Reception
3.1.1 Compositional method and reception
The assessment of material and processes is made through the perceptual response of the composer as 'rst listener, in a process based on actual (concrete) aural experience, and using the ear/brain mechanism most immediately to hand (the composers) as representative of the (presumably similar, though not identical) mechanisms of other human beings.3
Harrisons comments appear to form the basis of an all too convenient lingua franca, between composers and listeners, in the perception of electroacoustic works. He highlights the degree to which compositional methods in the medium are based on aural perception which, it is argued, is similar to the aural perception of listeners. However, the presumption that similar modes of listening exist among composers and listeners is problematic. Jean-Jacques Nattiez uncovers these difculties when discussing Schaeffers 'coute rduite.4 He understands this Schaefferian idea as describing sound less in terms of its origin than in terms of its heard morphological qualities (its amplitude envelope, frequency, density, mass etc.). This concept is still relevant to the way many contemporary composers approach their materials. However, the situation of the composer as 'rst listener causes its own problems. Nattiez describes the difference between 'hearing as experienced by the composer, who hears sounds with great attentiveness before integrating them into a work and 'habituated, ordinary hearing.5 The type of specialised listening which composers experience, an inevitable result of their concrete compositional working methods, appears to contribute to the disjunction between composer and listener; the mediation of the specialised listening conditions experienced by composers and 'normal conditions experienced by listeners is a central communicative issue facing the medium.
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3.1.2 Listening practice
The 'habituated, ordinary hearing of listeners merits further discussion as it is central to an understanding of the reception of this music. Robert Erickson in Sound Structure in Music provides a valuable insight into these listening habits - albeit only in relation to conventional musical material.6 He describes musical perception as a process of recognition and identication:
When we recognise or identify a sound we are in fact classifying it. To recognise the sound made by a violin is to assign it to a class. And classifying means making categories.7
What is most important, in the light of this discussion, is Ericksons belief that 1) nothing is absolute about the type or number of categories and 2) the manner in which listeners categorise is contingent on the situation, their background and training etc. In attempting to apply Ericksons theory to electroacoustic works on tape it is conceivable that listeners may create categories for unconventional extra-musical material. However, the creation of such categories would be entirely dependent on the socio-cultural background of the individual listener. The issue once more reverts to materials; the use of everyday, environmental sounds by composers challenges the listeners classication of sound as either musical or extra-musical. The basis of such a classication emanates from the social and cultural experience of the listener which may, or may not, include musical training and/or previous exposure to such works. Paradoxically, musical training may be disadvantageous when listening to electroacoustic tape works as quite often it inculcates a natural resistance to unconventional musical material. This trend in listening neatly coincides with Adornos views on why listeners may nd modern music repulsive:
The deepest currents present in this music proceed, however, from exactly those sociological and anthropological foundations peculiar to that public. The dissonances which horrify them testify to their own conditions; for that reason alone do they nd them unbearable.8
Adorno argues that modern music is perceived as repulsive because it is an uncomfortable manifestation of the cultural and social conditions of its own audience. This situation is emphasised by the facility to record sound; works may now actually employ social and cultural situations themselves as musical material. In this context, the creation of perceptual-musical categories by listeners is not entertained since traditional assumptions in relation to musical material are adopted; listening practice may be seen to be in conict with composers who suggest listening categories not conned to conventional musical material.
In citing the observations of Paul Kolers, Erickson advances the argument from a mere classication of sounds to a means of reception for a musical work. Kolers studies, in the area of visual perception, have a particular resonance for aural reception:
Once his (sic) input threshold is reached, the human will make something of the information. Unlike the computer the human program rarely fails to run. Although he may not be efcient, the human will do the best he can with what is presented to him, within the limits dened by the input and his modes of categorising.9
What is of interest here are the: '...limits dened by the input...[and the]... modes of categorising. These may be seen to represent both sides of the complex relationship between the art work and listener. The use made by composers of certain materials, which strongly lend themselves to mimetic interpretation, suggests listening categories that many listeners will not consider as musical. The primacy of mimesis in reception thus becomes a communication barrier for composers who wish to maintain a purely aural discourse.
3.1.3 The Primacy of Mimesis
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The rise in use of extra-musical material, which directly emanated from the facility to record sound, may also be understood as an extension of the dominance timbre has exerted in modern music. The elevation of timbre to a plane equal to, if not greater than, rhythm, pitch and harmony is reected in many branches of twentieth-century composition. An investigation of the increased structural force timbre has exercised in conventional instrumental and vocal music reveals its emergence from the dissolution of the traditional tonal system in the early years of this century. These developments are best understood when exploring the relationship between the music of late romanticism and the Second Viennese School.
During the latter half of the nineteenth century Wagner and Liszt greatly increased the scope of harmony and the rate of harmonic change. Wagner, in particular, stretched the structural force of tonality to an unprecedented level with extensive chromaticism and postponed resolution, notably in Tristan und Isolde (premiered, 1865). Increasingly, in the generation succeeding Wagner, composers had great difculty in accommodating this heightened chromaticism in forms dependent on a tonal language. Schoenberg, Berg and Weberns eventual solution to these problems was serialism; music that was based on a serial ordering of all twelve chromatic pitches. However, what is of concern here is not serialism itself but rather developments which led to the designation of timbre as a signicant musical parameter - equal to pitch, rhythm and harmony - and thus open to serial procedures.
Schoenbergs term Klangfarbenmelodie (sound-colour melody) denotes a succession of timbres related to one another in a way analogous to the relationship between pitches in a melody. A clear musical example of this theory is the third movement of his pre-serial Five Orchestral Pieces op.16 (1909), originally entitled Farben. The piece appears to suggest that the timbral transformation of a single pitch could be perceived as equivalent to the sequence of pitches in a traditional melody. Schoenbergs piece is signicant, however, not for its success in realising his proposed aims, but rather for the reason that timbre functioned as a prime structural element in composition.
The dissolution of tonally based structures and the increasing importance of timbre constitute a serious departure from traditional musical aesthetics and, in some respects, the tendency appears to foreshadow the extension of materials to everyday, environmental sounds in electroacoustic music. This link is made more apparent in the writings of Robert Erickson. He makes some valuable observations on the changing role of timbre suggesting that the traditional function of timbre in Western music has been as a carrier of melodic functions:
The differences of timbre at different pitches and in different registers of instruments, and the different timbres produced by the voice singing different vowels (not to mention timbre differences in vocal registers) have been treated as nuances. The nuances have always been an extremely important source of those irregular irregularities without which there would be no art at all; but in the fundamental structure of this music timbre has functioned as a carrier.10
Timbre in classical western music has been treated and viewed as a nuance, or an extra, applied feature subservient to melodic and harmonic considerations. This contrasts sharply with the primacy of timbre as a prime structural agent in much modern music. Erickson continues by suggesting that timbre functions no longer as a carrier but rather as a sound object itself:
Gross changes of pitch register, dynamics or articulation and the avoidance of stepwise motion and rhythmic regularity enhance the perception of contrasting sound objects.11
This statement encapsulates a fundamental aesthetic change relevant not only to electroacoustic music but also to a considerable amount of contemporary instrumental music. Denitions of music, it would appear, have become more closely aligned to the idea of 'sound objects than at any stage in musical history. This presents difculties in the reception of this music because languages, in many cases, are based primarily on the control and contrast of timbre and not traditional concerns such as melody, rhythm and tonal harmony. Jeff Pressing highlights these difculties:
...we know that one of the reasons that listeners show limited liking for contemporary art music is their inability to code it either on the basis of simple pitch or rhythmic structures, and hence assign it meaning.12
These trends in reception, borne out of listening habits, represent challenges which composers must address. Denis Smalleys theories on listening in electroacoustic music prescribe the nature of the relationship to be cultivated by composers with their audience. He states:
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Listeners can only apprehend music if they discover a perceptual afnity with its material and structure. Such an afnity depends on the partnership between composer and listener mediated by aural perception.13
Communication between composer and listener would appear to depend on the degree to which the composer can 'tap into the perception of listeners. This means those composers wishing to maintain a purely abstract musical discourse face the greatest difculties given the physical nature of the medium. Some form of mimetic interpretation is inevitable in medium where all data is aural and no conventional 'visual-musical stimulus is present. Smalley expands the idea of 'perceptual afnity, in relation to listeners perception of tape music, by describing the way listeners relate to sounds as:
...source bonding..: the natural tendency to relate sounds to supposed sources and causes, and to relate sounds to each other because they appear to have shared or associated origins.14
Smalley, however, does not advance the debate with labels such as 'source bonding. This is merely an example of new terminology designed to describe old problems. The primacy of 'extra-musical, or mimetic interpretation, of what composers may intend as abstract musical discourse, has been evident since the origins of the medium. H.H. Stuckenschmidt, writing about Elektronische Musik, outlined the tendency to assign extramusical associations and contexts for sounds not seen. While Stuckenschmidt was concerned with the music of the Cologne school his comments are still relevant for the medium in the modern era:
It cannot be denied that the associative effect, which the initiator denies of being of any relevance has been the principle reaction of the majority of listeners when faced with this music for the rst time. There appears to be a considerable discrepancy between postulation and reception, a discrepancy which must be the very nature of the new art form.15
Adornos views about the nature of modern music, and its relation to the canon of tradition, reect Stuckenschmidts concern with the: '...discrepancy between postulation and reception evident not only in Elektronische Musik but in the medium as a whole. The disjunction between the 'I and 'we, which Adorno discusses in the context of 'The Antinomy of Modern Music, is relevant when considering the tape medium. He believes that while modern music is incapable of positive meaning within itself, its salvation lies in its negation of a mass commercialism which reduces music to the level of an economic commodity:
Its [Modern Music] truth appears guaranteed more by its denial of any meaning in organised society, of which it will have no part - accomplished by its own organised vacuity - than by any capability of positive meaning with itself. Under the present circumstances it is restricted to denitive negation.16
In the case of Elektronische Musik, the attempt to produce music from completely synthetic timbres which could be understood entirely in their own terms proved impossible. The synthetic timbres of Stockhausen s early electronic studies were inevitably received in terms of what they sound most similar to - in this case the sounds were perceived as bell-like timbres. On the other hand, the employment of natural sounds - in the expectation that they could be perceived purely for their abstract sonic characteristics - was also a failure. Schaeffers rst work, tude aux chemins de fer, highlighted major issues of extra-musical association in reception; instead of being a work in which abstract qualities of sound could be perceived in their own terms, the materials and their organisation were more associated with the sounds of trains and train stations.17 Schaeffers notion that a sounds context could be removed from that sound, 'coute rduite, purely because it had been recorded, was not plausible. The trend in listening is to assign a sound to a source, real or imagined in the mind of the listener.
Both of the examples given above highlight the importance of Stuckenschmidts '...discrepancy between postulation and reception and Adornos 'collective perception. Despite radically different intentions on behalf of major composers involved in the medium, in this case Stockhausen and Schaeffer, similar challenges associated in reconciling Adornos 'I and 'we were confronted. Adornos thesis in the 'Antinomy of Modern Music would appear conrmed by the mimetic responses of listeners to both Musique concrte and Elektronische Musik. The real value of these genres was in their negation of the culture industry. The failure of Stockhausens 'new electronic timbres and Schaeffers 'coute rduite, both hugely important trends in the medium - and still highly relevant for current electroacoustic music, is a result of, in part, the primacy of mimetic interpretation of material used by composers who intend a more abstract musical discourse.
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3.1.4 Concrete and Abstract Listening Adornos disjunction between the 'I and 'we is still evident in the music and theories of contemporary electroacoustic composers. Many composers, such as Smalley, Harrison and Dhomont, insist music in the medium must be listened to in a specialised manner. They place high demands on their audience, expecting their music to be perceived in a way that can only truly be achieved through the act of composition itself. Smalley best expresses this attitude in the following comments:
All sound possess...dual potential - the abstract and the concrete aspects of sound - and all musical structures are balanced somewhere between the two, although exactly how they are found to be balanced can vary greatly among listeners. This is because all listeners have considerable practice at the concrete aspects of daily life, while a more abstract approach needs to be acquired. However, a listener used to a more abstract perceptual attitude can easily disregard the mimetic dimension when interpreting sounds. Balancing abstract and concrete attitudes is therefore a question of both competence and intention.18
Smalley seeks to shift responsibility away from the composer and onto the listener. The 'competence and intention of the listener are brought into sharp focus. He believes it rests with the listener to decide whether a mimetic or abstract discourse is desirable. What is highly questionable, however, is the ability of listeners to 'easily disregard the mimetic dimension of interpreting sound. It is possible that through 'coute rduite an abstract approach can be acquired, but it is questionable whether this occurs at the expense of mimetic interpretation; the primacy of an abstract perception of sound over a more mimetic one may indeed be possible, but surely this is not to the exclusion of mimetic interpretations. Smalley appears to almost free the composer from responsibility for materials chosen. He suggests that if a trained listener has the ability to listen abstractly, and ignore the concrete dimension of sound, the concrete nature of such material becomes of diminished importance for that listener. While this may be true to a certain extent, the fact remains that the trained listener will still be conscious of the mimetic nature of material - an inescapable consequence of a medium in which a sounds source is unseen.
The inevitability of a mimetic interpretation of materials, especially Musique concrte and its derivatives, has been heavily criticised by Pierre Boulez. He launches a scathing attack on the type of materials used by many composers in the medium:
...if the material, through previous use, is rich in connotations, if it stimulates involuntary associations and risks diverting expression into unwanted directions, one is led in practice into playing, if not absolutely against the material, then at least to the limits of its possibilities.19
This would appear to be a great danger for electroacoustic composition on tape. Composition could be reduced to a situation where a primary concern is the limitation of mimetic potential. However, the reality of the medium is that a purely abstract musical discourse is not possible for either composers or listeners. A combination of aural and mimetic perception is inevitable irrespective of the quality of a listeners perception or even a composers ability in the medium; the absence of visual clues as to the source of sounds sets the listener upon an irreversible course where sounds are assigned to a real or imagined source - musical or not.20 Boulez may be regarded as representing one side of the previously mentioned argument that Cage identied in the pre-war era relating to: '...the use of noise and so-called musical material, where noise can be understood as any 'un-musical sound.21 He objects to the use of non-traditional musical material by prescribing what musical material should be in other words:
To lend itself to composition, musical material needs to be sufciently susceptible to transformation, and capable of generating and sustaining a dialectic.22
Boulez believes Musique concrte composers have ignored this in their selection of materials and that the capability of 'generating and sustaining a dialectic with such unsuitable materials is impossible. However, Boulez appears to overlook the fact that the medium itself creates an environment where sounds are open to a greater degree of possible interpretations by listeners. The absence of traditional performers and presentation of musical works via loudspeakers creates unconventional musical listening conditions. These acousmatic conditions present new challenges, or, negatively, difculties, as reception may veer - to a greater degree than experienced in traditional instrumental/vocal musical works - between an abstract musical discourse and a strongly mimetic one. Composers wishing to maintain a purely abstract musical discourse, using material which Boulez
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would regard: '..capable of generating and sustaining a dialectic may well nd their efforts frustrated by the inevitable mimetic interpretations of listeners denied the visual stimulus of conventional musical performance.
It becomes clear when returning to Smalleys 'competence and intention of listeners, that this view is of fundamental importance to the reception of works in the medium. This appears to be the case almost irrespective of the material employed. Material which a composer may regard as strongly abstract in nature, or even sounds produced by conventional musical instruments, may still be interpreted extra-musically due to the physical nature of the medium. Eduard Hanslicks writings on the perception of musical works in the nineteenth century are still remarkably relevant for listeners of electroacoustic music and also appear to compliment Smalleys views on listening. He states:
In pure contemplation the listener enjoys the sonorities of a musical composition, every material interest must be forgotten. Among these, however, is the tendency to allow the feelings to be stirred. An exclusively intellectual response to beauty is a logical rather than aesthetic relationship, while a predominately emotional response is even more questionable, in fact denitely pathological.23
Hanslick is highly critical of listeners who allow 'material interest, in the form of either predominately intellectual or emotional responses, to affect the contemplation of music. These 'material interests should be set aside in order to facilitate proper aesthetic judgement, the criterion for which, in Hanslicks view, is the conviction that: '...every art must be known through its own technical denitions and understood by itself.24 This is highly signicant for the reception of electroacoustic tape music as it places an onus on the listener to become familiar with the materials and technique of the genre. He continues:
...'investigation...is based on the principle that the aesthetic rules governing each art are inseparable from the individual characteristics of the material of that art and its technique.25
The 'competence and intention of the listener appear to be in a ne balance with the materials and techniques employed in composition. Greater 'investigation of electroacoustic music by listeners may be the key to a higher aesthetic experience of the art for listeners; responsibility lies not only with the composer but also the listener. The emphasis placed by Hanslick and Smalley on the listener is signicant because it illustrates that reception is equally contingent on the dual roles of composers and listeners. In many ways this is a far more satisfactory rationalisation than Adornos 'Antinomy of Modern Music which does not credit the intelligence of listeners to both see through the hegemonic nature of commercialisation and take more than a passive interest in music.
Conclusion
This study has focused on the aesthetics of electroacoustic music with a special emphasis on the relationship between the composition and reception of works on xed media. The rst chapter considered the way electroacoustic composers dene and describe the eld in which they work. This examination took the form of a review of electroacoustic terminology. It was not the intention of this chapter to provide a systematic categorisation of terminology - this would have been beyond the scope of this study - but rather to offer an aesthetic context from which an understanding of the composition and reception of electroacoustic music could be further explored with greater clarity.
Annette Vande Gornes classication of terms was used as a framework for the discussion. Terms were divided into three categories. Her rst category, 'Historical, provided an opportunity to focus on the origins of the medium in Musique concrte and Elektronische Musik.. The radically different aesthetic of these schools was found to be highly inuenced by the varying technologies employed. The tape recorder had a huge role in determining Musique concrte aesthetics as Schaeffers aesthetic was based on the ability to manipulate microphone recordings of natural sound. Similarly, Elektronische Musik aesthetics were dependant on the ability to synthesise timbres from rst principles. This facility made it possible to subject timbre to serial procedures.
The signicance of Stockhausens Gesang der Jnglinge was also considered. The view that this piece, in which a boys voice was integrated with
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synthesised timbres, represented a real convergence between Musique concrte and Elektronische Musik was found to be misleading; Stockhausen was still using serialist methods to organise his musical materials - methods that were complete anathema to the more perceptually oriented proponents of Musique concrte. However, Gesang der Jnglinge did blur distinctions and encouraged the increasing use of the more generic term of 'electroacoustic music to describe the medium.
The chief benet of the term is that no distinction is made between the origins of sounds - natural or synthetic. However, as Manning points out, the term is not in colloquial usage, unlike terms such as 'electronic or 'computer and this suggests to the public that the music is litist and esoteric. Concern over the use of the 'electroacoustic music also emanates from composers within the medium. Chion and Dhomont, in particular, have criticised this terminology both for its vagueness and vacuity. In response to this a more specic term, 'acousmatic music, was adopted by Franois Bayle to distinguish works in the tape medium from real-time electronic performance and also to dene a particular aesthetic for tape works; the term outlined the compositional concern for communication in a medium where a sounds source is unseen. 'Acousmatic music has been adopted by many composers in the tape medium to describe the aesthetic basis for their music.
Vande Gornes second category, instrumental, outlines the tendency to describe the means by which electroacoustic music is created at the expense of describing the music itself. The disadvantages of both Otto Luenings denition of 'electronic music and 'computer music are clear; in making a distinction between natural and synthesised materials and by describing electroacoustic music by means of it transmission, the perceptual qualities of sound, as experienced in listening are not addressed. Vande Gornes nal category is the least signicant of the three. The terms most relevant to the current study were 'Cinma pour loreille and 'Radiophonic. These represent specic genres within the tape medium which are descendants of Musique concrte. 'Cinma pour loreille is a genre that places an emphasis on the use of environmental sounds which may have a metaphorical or abstract musical function depending on the discourse 'Radiophonic works are strongly associated with Musique concrte , using the same materials and techniques but are presented via radio.
Chapter 2 examined the composition of electroacoustic music on tape. The freedom composers experience today, an apparently ideal state, generates its own problems; composers are required to dene their own language and materials as a lingua franca does not exist for them. Reference was made to the expanded range of musical material resulting from the facility to record and synthesise sound; the desire to extend the scope of musical material to noise and everyday environmental sounds was traced to the pioneering work of the Futurist Movement, Edgar Varse and John Cage. These protagonists represented a current of thought, in the period c.1910 - 1945, which was characterised by a desire for new materials and means of expression assisted by developing technologies.
The nal section of this chapter explored the construction of languages from the enlarged range of materials available. Emmerson provides an excellent starting point in this area by his division of all musical discourse into either mimetic or aural discourse. Mimesis was understood not only as the imitation of nature but also by the employment of extra-musical materials while aural discourse denes a more abstract and conventional musical discourse. These poles of discourse, which never exist in ideal states, create a continuum of possibilities for composers.
Emmerson, having dened modes of discourse, now sets about describing methods for creating musical syntax in the medium. He identies two poles which he labels 'abstract and 'abstracted syntax. A works syntax may be 'abstracted from the materials in some way whether by 'coute rduite as in Musique concrte or by attention to the organisation of sounds in the environment as in the 'ecological works of Luc Ferrari and Claude Schryer. Alternatively, a syntax can be imposed upon sounds in an abstract manner, for example the use of serial techniques in Elektronische Musik.
Emmerson combines these sets of oppositions - mimetic/aural and abstract/abstracted - to dene works in the tape medium. This is reasonably successful until an attempt is made to designate works as a combination of aural and mimetic discourse created by an abstract and/or abstracted syntax. His acknowledgement that aural and mimetic discourse do not exist in pure forms means a degree of ambiguity already exists within these categories. This ambiguity exists in the perception of these works and needs to be addressed before creating further categories based on his original postulation. Emmersons analysis, while illuminating from a compositional perspective, reveals little of the way this music is perceived by listeners. An aural discourse intended by the composer may be interpreted mimetically by the listener, equally, a mimetic discourse may be perceived 'aurally. This paradox highlights the communicative issues facing composers in the medium.
The nal chapter considered the reception of electroacoustic music on xed media. Differences in listening behaviour between composers and listeners were examined. It was suggested that compositional methods, resulting from new technologies, contribute to a disjunction between the art work and listener; the more specialised listening experienced through the act of composition appeared to be in conict with the normal, habitual listening experienced by listeners. Adornos 'collective perception may be seen, in the case of electroacoustic tape music, to revolve around this conict and, in particular, the primacy of mimesis in reception.
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The dominance of mimetic interpretation by listeners is largely a result of the medium itself - a medium in which a sounds source is unseen. It is also, however, a question of the particular materials employed by composers. The increasing signicance of timbre and dissolution of tonality in many branches of contemporary instrumental music may be linked to the overall expansion of extra-musical materials. Compositional attitudes to timbre have changed in the 20th century; Erickson suggests timbre has become a musical object itself instead of a mere carrier of melodic and harmonic functions. A considerable amount of contemporary music has been based on the control of timbre at the expense of pitch, rhythm and harmony. This presents a barrier too great for many listeners who nd difculty in coding music not based on simple pitch and rhythmic structures.
While composers may be challenged for the breakdown of Adornos 'collective perception it must also be argued that there is an onus on listeners to engage meaningfully with this music. Smalley insists electroacoustic tape music should be listened to in a specialised manner. He argues that all sound possess a dual potential - the abstract and concrete aspects of sound - which can differ greatly among listeners. He believes that the 'competence and intention of the listener determines the degree of mimetic or abstract musical listening. However, his suggestion that the mimetic dimension of sound can be ignored by the trained listener is problematic given the physical nature of the medium; it is almost inevitable that some form of mimetic interpretation will be imposed on the material by listeners denied the visual stimulus of conventional musical performers.
Finally, it may be seen that the 'competence and intention of the listener is in a delicate balance with the materials and techniques of the composer. Hanslick challenges listeners by arguing that material interest must be forgotten for pure contemplation of the art work and that this is only possible by knowing an art through its own technical denitions and understanding it by itself. He believes greater 'investigation of the materials and techniques of an art form by listeners is the key to aesthetic experience; responsibility lies not only with composers to communicate but also with listeners to engage. This represents a much more optimistic view than Adornos 'Antinomy of Modern Music - which does not credit listeners for their ability to experience music as more than mere entertainment - and suggests a practical basis for the development of electroacoustic musical aesthetics.
Bibliography
Adorno, Theodor W. Quasi una Fantasia : Essays on Modern Music, Translated by Rodney Livingstone, London : Verso, 1994.
Adorno, Theodor W. The Philosophy of Modern Music, Translated by Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster, London : Sheed and Ward, 1987.
Appleton, Jon H. 'Electroacoustic Music, The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, Edited by Don Michael Randel, London : Harvard University Press, 1986.
Boulez, Pierre. 'Technology and the Composer, The Language of Electroacoustic Music, London : Macmillan, 1986.
Boulez, Pierre. 'Entries for a Musical Encyclopedia, Revels dApprenti, Oxford : Clarendon, 1991.
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Chion, Michel. La musique lectroacoustique, Paris : PUF, 1982.
Delalande, Franois. 'La musique lectroacoustique, coupure et continuit, Ars Sonora, Revue 4, November, 1996.
Dhomont, Francis. 'Acousmatic, Quest-ce Dire?, Cycle de lerrance, CD, Empreintes Digitales, IMED 9607.
Dhomont, Francis. 'Acousmatic Update, Journal of Electroacoustic Music, Volume 9, January 1996.
Emmerson, Simon. Relation of Language to Materials, London : Macmillan, 1986.
Emmerson, Simon. Analysis and the Composition of Electroacoustic Music, PhD Thesis, City University, 1981.
Erickson, Robert. Sound Structure in Music, Berkley and Los Angeles : University of California, 1975.
Ernst, David. The Evolution of Electronic Music, London : Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1977.
Greenburg, Charlotte. The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, Edited by Don Michael Randel, London : Harvard University Press, 1986.
Grifths, Paul. Modern Music : The avant garde since 1945, London : J M Dent & Sons Ltd., 1981.
Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works : An Essay in the Philosophy of Music, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1992.
Harvey, Jonathan. The Music of Stockhausen : An Introduction, London : Faber, 1975.
Hanslick, Eduard. On the Musically Beautiful: A contribution towards the revision of the Aesthetics of Music, Translated and edited by Geoffrey Payzant, Indianapolis : Hackett Publishing Company, 1986.
Harrison, Jonty. 'Sound, Space, Sculpture: some thoughts on the 'what', 'how', and (most importantly) 'why' of diffusion...and related topics, Journal of Electroacoustic Music, May, 1996.
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Hller, York. 'Resonance: Composition Today, Musical Thought at IRCAM, Volume 1, London : G+B/harwood, 1984. Kant, Imanuel. Imanuel Kants Critique of Pure Reason, Translated by Norman Kemp Smith, London : Macmillan, 1929.
Kolers, Paul A. 'Some Psychological Aspects of Pattern Recognition, Recognising Patterns : Studies in Living and Automatic Systems, ed. Paul Kolers and Murray Eden, Cambridge : Massachusettes Institute of Technology, 1968.
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Source:John McEvillys MA dissertation as a double module for the degree of MA in Music Technology at the Queens University of Belfast. This work is copywrited by Queens University and John McEvilly. All right reserved.
[1] Messiaen is quoted from a programme note of an early Musique Concrte concert at the Club dEssai, Paris. See Luening,O. The Development and Practice of Electronic Muisc, New Jersey : Prentice Hall Inc., 1975, p.12. Hereafter, Luening 1975.
[2] For the purposes of this dissertation 'electroacoustic is dened as 'Music that is produced, changed or reproduced by electronic means and that
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makes creative use of electronic equipment; see Appleton, Jon H. The New Harvard Dictionary of Music / edited by Don Michael Randel, London : Harvard University Press, 1986, pp.280-283.
[3] Emmerson, Simon. Relation of Language to Materials, London : Macmillan, 1986, p.18. Hereafter, Emmerson 1986.
[4] Vande Gorne, Annette. 'Les mots pour le dire: Lexique des musiques lectrocoustiques, Ars Sonora, Revue 3, March 1996. Hereafter, Vande Gorne 1996. [5] Melodrama, in the traditional sense, refers to the '...musico-dramatic technique in which spoken text alternates with instrumental music or more rarely, is recited against a continuing musical background....some of the best-known examples of melodrama appear as parts of a larger work such as opera...famous examples include Beethovens Fidelio (act 2 scene 1) and Webers Der Freischtz (act 2 secne 2); see The New Harvard Dictionary of Music / edited by Don Michael Randel, London : Harvard University Press, 1986. In electroacoustic music melodrama is an interaction between the live performance of a text, by one performer, and acousmatic sound e.g. Chion, Michel. La Tentation de Saint Antoine, INA-GRM, INA C 2002/3, (Vande Gorne, personal communication, 1998).
[6] See Manning, Peter. Electronic and Computer Music, (Second Edition), Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1993, p.19. Hereafter, Manning 1993. The Paris music studio, originally named the Club d'Essai (1948) was established with the aid of Radio Tlvision Franais RTF. Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry were the principal composers in the early years of the studio. The Cologne Studio, Studio fr Elektronische Musik, was founded in 1951 by Herbert Eimert and the Westdeutsher Rundfunk Radio company; principal composers at the studio were Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
[7] See Sparshott F.E., 'Aesthetics of Music, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Volume 1, London : Macmillan, 1980, p. 132. [8] The Internationale Ferienkurse fr Neue Musik (International Summer Courses for New Music) were initiated in 1946 by Wolfgang Steinecke. These course encompassed composition and interpretation and have included many preimres by leading composers, e.g. Stockhausen, Boulez, Berio.
[9] Manning 1993, p.356. [10] Dhomont, Francis. 'Acousmatic Update, Journal of Electroacoustic Music, Volume 9, January 1996, p.7. Hereafter, Dhomont 1996.
[11] Dhomont, 1996, p.7.
[12] Emmerson, Simon. Analysis and the Composition of Electroacoustic Music, PhD Thesis, City University, 1981. Hereafter, Emmerson 1981.
[13] Emmerson, 1981, p.254. [14] Schaeffer, Pierre. Que sais-je - La Musique Concrte, Paris : Presses Universitaires De France, 1967, p.29.
[15] Vande Gorne 1996, p.20.
[16] The precise date at which this term was generally adopted is not known. It has been suggested by Jonty Harrison (personal communication, Canadian Electroacoustic Community Disscussion List - CEC Discuss - 1998) that the term '...was a compromise to cover music which could no longer be considered either Musique concrte or Elektronische Musik in their original, historical senses. The ambiguity in terminology was
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precipitated by Stockhausens Gesang der Jnglinge. Kevin Austin (personal communication - CEC Discuss - 1998) suggests the rst reference to the term 'electroacoustic music was on a London/Decca 33 1/3 rpm LP of 'sounds' from the BBC radiophonic workshop in the early 1950s. The term 'electroacoustic' (as a technical reference) had already been in use since the beginning of recording media.
[17] Manning 1993, pp.354-355.
[18] Dhomont, 1996, p.7.
[19] Chion, Michel. La musique lectroacoustique, Paris:PUF, 1982, p.9.
[20] Dhomont, Francis. 'Acousmatic, Quest-ce Dire?, Cycle de lerrance, CD, Empreintes Digitales, IMED 9607. [21] Larousse, Pierre. Le Larousse pour tous: nouveau dictionnaire encyclopdique, Paris : Libraire Larousse, 1909. [22] Dhomont, 1996, p.10.
[23] Luening, 1975, p.14.
[24] Wells, Thomas H., The Technique of Electronic Music, New York : Schirmer Books, 1981, p.140. [25] Issues of language and materials, in composition and the reception of electroacoustic tape works, will be discussed in the following chapters. [26] Kant, Imanuel. Imanuel Kants Critique of Pure Reason, Translated by Norman Kemp Smith, London : Macmillan, 1929, pp. 24-27. 1 Hller, York. 'Resonance: Composition Today in Musical Thought at IRCAM, Volume 1, London : G+B/harwood, 1984, p.67.
2 The cult of Beethoven dominated the 19th-century artistic landscape and historiography. E.T.A Hoffmann, Nietsche, Hesse and Mann were preoccupied with the notion of the artist as hero. Composers such as Schumann wrote that: '...the sole standard of judgement is genius (as opposed to talent): original, unforced, authentic expression, avoiding all that is contrived or conventional, and without any reference to preconceived formal properties.' - Sparshott, F.E., 'Aesthetics of Music in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Volume 16, London : Macmillan, 1980, p. 127. The status of the musical work in the nineteenth century is also another cornerstone of Romantic aesthetics. This was based on the philosophical concept of "Werktreue" (delity to the musical work), which itself is dependent on the concept of "Werk" - the objectied musical work-thing to which delity is owed. The emergence of concepts such as "Werk" and "Werktreue" are still central to contemporary music, see Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works - An Essay in the Philosophy of Music, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1992. 3 Adorno, Theodor W. The Philosophy of Modern Music, Translated by Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster, London : Sheed and Ward, 1987, p.5.
4 Adorno, Theodor W. Quasi una Fantasia - Essays on Modern Music, Translated by Rodney Livingstone, London : Verso, 1994, p.268. Hereafter, Adorno, 1994.
5 Reception and criticism will be considered in the next chapter.
6 Delalande, Franois. 'La musique lectroacoustique, coupure et continuit, Ars Sonora, Revue 4, November, 1996.
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7 Emmerson 1986, p.18. 8 Vande Gorne, Annette. 'Une histoire de la musique lectroacoustic, Ars Sonora, Revue 3, March 1996. 9 Emmerson 1986, p.19 10 Key Futurist publications included, Filippo Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurist poetry (1909) and Balilla Pratella's two publications Manifesto of Futurist Musicians (1910) and Technical manifestation of Futurist Musicians (1911).
11 Manning 1993, p.4. 12 Russolo invented the 'Intonarumori' and the 'Psofarmoni'. The former were mechanical noise instruments producing scratching, hissing and grunting sounds, while the latter were keyboard instruments that imitated animal and natural sounds. 13 Adorno 1994, p.268. 14 Ouellette, Fernand. Edgar Varse, Translated by Derek Coltman, London : Calder & Boyars, 1966, p.15.
15 Manning 1993, p.6. 16 Manning 1993, p.15. 17 Harrison, Jonty. 'Sound, Space, Sculpture: some thoughts on the 'what', 'how', and (most importantly) 'why' of diffusion...and related topics, Journal of Electroacoustic Music, May, 1996, p.12. Hereafter, Harrison 1996.
18 Dhomont 1996, p.7. 19 Schaeffer 1967, p.29.
20 Harrison 1996, p.13. 21 Schaeffer 1967, p29.
22 Emmerson 1986. 24 Emmerson 1986,p.18. 25 Windsor, William Luke. A Perceptual Approach to the Description and Analysis of Acousmatic Music, Ph. D Thesis, Department of Music, City University, London, 1995, p.169. Hereafter, Windsor 1995.
26 Wishart, T. 'Sound Symbols and Landscapes, The Language of Electroacoustic Music, London : Macmillan, 1986, p.36.
1 Adorno, Theodor W. Philosophy of Modern Music, London : Sheed &Ward, 1994, pp.18-19. Hereafter, Adorno 1994.
2 Adorno 1994, pp. 3-24. 3 Harrison 1996, p.19.
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4 Nattiez, Jean-Jacques. Music and Discourse: Towards a Semiology of Music, Translated by Carolyn Abbate, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 1990, p.93. Hereafter, Nattiez 1990.
5 Nattiez 1990, p.95.
6 Erickson, Robert. Sound Structure in Music, Berkley and Los Angeles : University of California, 1975, p.10. Hereafter, Erickson 1975.
7 Erickson 1975, p.12.
8 Adorno 1994, p.9. 9 Kolers, Paul A. 'Some Psychological Aspects of Pattern Recognition, Recognising Patterns: Studies in Living and Automatic Systems, ed. Paul Kolers and Murray Eden, Canbridge : Massachusettes Institute of Technology, 1968, p.60.
10 Erickson 1975, p.12. 11 Erickson, p. 13.
12 Pressing, J. Novelty, 'Progress and Research Method in Computer Music Composition, Proceedings of the 1994 ICMC, Aarhus, Denmark, DIEM, p.9.
13 Smalley, Denis. 'Spectro-morphology and Structuring Processes, The Language of Electroacoustic Music, London : Macmillan,1986 p.60. Hereafter, Smalley 1986. 14 Smalley, Denis. (unpublished) Spectromorphology: Explaining sound shapes. See MacDonald, Alistair. 'Performance Practice in the Presentation of Electroacoustic Music, Journal of Electroacoustic Music, Volume 9, May 1996, p.21.
15 Stuckenschmidt, H.H. 'The Third Stage: Some observations on the aesthetics of Electronic Music, Translated by Hans G. Helm, Die Reihe, Vol.1, Cologne : Universal Edition, 1958, p.11.
16 Adorno 1984, p.20. 17 Manning 1993, pp.21-22. 18 Smalley 1986, p.64. 19 Boulez, Pierre. 'Technology and the Composer, The Language of Electroacoustic Music, London : Macmillan, 1986, p.13.
20 Smalleys 'source-bonding relates to the designation of the source or imagined source of acousmatic sound. 21 Manning 1993, p.15. 22 Boulez, Pierre. 'Entries for a Musical Encyclopedia, Revels dApprenti, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1991.
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23 Hanslick, Eduard. On the Musically Beautiful: A contribution towards the revision of the Aesthetics of Music, Translated and edited by Geoffrey Payzant, Indianapolis : Hackett Publishing Company, 1986, pp. 4-5. Hereafter Hanslick 1986.
24 Hanslick 1986, pp.1-2.
25 Hanslick 1986, p.2.
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I would like to thank the following for their invaluable help:

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