L'objet Sonore Maintenant: Pierre Schaeffer, sound objects and the phenomenological reduction

Published in Organised Sound 12(1): 15-24, ©2007 Cambridge University Press.

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 logical ‘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 theorizing of the ‘sound object’, this paper aims at articulating the distance between contemporary and historical usage of the term.

Nota bene: An early version of this paper was delivered at Spark 2005: festival of electronic music and art, University of Minnesota, Friday, Feb. 18, 2005. The attached version is reproduced from the conference proceedings.

The Music Of Skepticism: Materiality, Intentionality, Forms of Life

This, along with Anaphora, constitutes my doctoral dissertation. If you are interested in obtaining a copy, or reading particular chapters, please contact me and I will be happy to expedite. Here is the abstract:

This dissertation addresses the role of skepticism in the theory, practice and philosophy of New Music. My aim is twofold: 1) to expose the anti-skeptical background behind the acousmatic reduction and to address its persistence in recent compositional practices; 2) to define a skeptical music in theory and practice, through a philosophical discussion of the productive ways that skepticism critiques intentionality, through an analysis of works exhibiting skeptical strategies, and through the creation of a new composition informed by these strategies.

Part I addresses Pierre Schaeffer’s concept of l’objet sonore and its origins in Husserlian phenomenology. Schaeffer reduces the experience of listening to its objective foundations in intentionality, dismissing the significance of history, culture, and context. I argue that the compositional inheritors of Schaeffer’s project are the Spectralists. Analyzing Grisey’s Partiels, I demonstrate how Spectral composers create musical phenomenological reductions that present listeners with a reduced experience of sounds, ultimately displacing musical skepticism for a non-arbitrary, self-certain grounding to musical composition.

Roger Scruton’s identification of the “acousmatic experience” with the “art of music” inherits Schaeffer’s attempt to secure musical practices in the intentional realm. Although formulating a philosophy of music which tacitly accepts the skeptical notion that our relation to the world as such is not one of knowing, Scruton deadens skepticism’s force by appealing to the publicity of a common musical language (tonality) and the shared cognitive features of musical understanding (metaphor). Compositionally, Steve Reich’s Different Trains repeats Scruton’s concerns by resisting the mere literalness of sounds through the transformation of compositional materials into metaphors, appealing to musical conventions and recuperating tonality.

In Part II, Wittgenstein’s skeptical paradox is invoked to critique the security of the intentional realm, initiating a non-acousmatic theory of listening. This establishes a skeptical project for New Music—the attempt to make our musical “forms of life” perspicuous. The outlines of a skeptical compositional practice are concretely addressed in two works: Morton Feldman’s Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello and Elliott Carter’s Night Fantasies. In a final appendix, I discuss the connections between this skeptical practice and my composition of a new work for strings, harp and piano, entitled Anaphora.

TABLE OF CONTENTS, with brief descriptions

Introduction -- skepticism, specific and generic objects, the Pythagorian curtain

PART I: ACOUSMATICS AND ANTI-SKEPTICISM

Chapter 1: Phenomenological Reductions: Pierre Schaeffer -- an analysis of Schaeffer's phenomenological method for arriving at the sonorous object.
Chapter 2: The Metaphysics of Organical Form: Gérard Grisey's Partiels -- an analysis of Partiels in relationship to "reduced listening."
Chapter 3: Wittgenstein on Essences -- a Wittgensteinian critique of phenomenology.
Chapter 4: Epistemological Reductions: Roger Scruton -- a critique of Scruton's concept of musical metaphor.
Chapter 5: From Gestalt to Metaphor: Steve Reich's Different Trains -- tracing the shift towards metaphor in Reich's later works.

PART II: NON-ACOUSMATIC LISTENING AND FORMS OF LIFE

Chapter 6: Making the Musical Form of Life Perspicuous -- an application of Wittgenstein's skeptical paradox to the aesthetics of new music.
Chapter 7: Skeptical Strategies: Morton Feldman and Elliott Carter -- describing the shape of musical skepticism in practice.

Appendix 1: The Reductio ad absurdum of Virtual Musical Space -- would Roger Scruton agree with Roger Shepard?
Appendix 2: Anaphora, for strings, harp and piano.

Aesthetic Problems of Net Music

A paper read at Spark 2007, University of Minnesota, in Feb 2007.

Abstract: This paper addresses issues involved in the formation of an aesthetics of Net music. The main factors considered are: 1) the affordances of networked communications, 2) digital ontology and de-differentiation, and 3) the lack of an essential relationship between digital ontology and its medium of realization. By focusing on cognitive, affective and sensory results of the mappings (or algorithms) that link digital ontology with its medium of realization, this paper outlines an aesthetics of Net music, and suggests some strategies for the creation of Net musical works.