Acousmatics

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The term Akusmatik (Greek Akousma "auditory perception") describes a music whose sound-generating means are not visible and usually not identifiable. A listening-only situation arises because attention is not affected by any visible or predictable sound source.

Concept history

The term acousmatics refers to a Pythagorean tradition according to which only his closest students were allowed to see him during his lessons. The new students had to take a seat behind a curtain and so could neither see the explanatory gestures nor the physiognomy of Pythagoras. They lacked all visual information so that their understanding of the lesson was only possible through intensive listening. These students were called acousmatists because they relied on acoustic perception. With the advent of radiophony and the emergence of the first sound music, the term was also discussed as a term for music. In the 20th century, the writer Jérôme Peignot first used the term "bruit acousmatique" (French for "acousmatic noise"). In 1955 he suggested the expression in Musique Animée , a broadcast by the Groupe de Recherches de Musique concrète : "An acousmatic noise, it is said (in the dictionary), is a sound that can be heard without its cause being proven." In Traité des Objets Musicaux (1966) Pierre Schaeffer takes up the term again and relates it there to a reduced hearing. He compares the role of his tape recorder with that of the Pythagorean curtain. However, he did not make much use of the term beyond that. In 1974, François Bayle suggested using the term acousmatics to denote the special listening conditions for music that is intended to be conveyed exclusively through sound carriers. The term electroacoustic music was no longer suitable to denote musical work in the studio since electroacoustic musical instruments existed, and therefore a new term was needed for this type of music. Bayle has since used the term musique acousmatique ( acousmatic music ) to describe the music that is created in the studio and projected in the concert hall. In this sense, the term acousmatics has since been established in the field of contemporary music.

The acousmatic music

François Bayle's designation Musique Acousmatique refers to two circumstances of acousmatic music : On the one hand, it becomes clear that the means of sound generation are not visible and often cannot be precisely identified, and on the other hand, reference is made to the situation of pure hearing. The term acousmatics generally describes a musical-acoustic event, the sound of which is not directly related to its origin. All music that is created solely for mediation via sound carriers (LP, CD, MP3, etc.) is therefore acousmatic music , in contrast to live music (which can also be recorded, but not or not exclusively for the sound carrier is determined). Acousmatics is music that, for intentional reasons, can only be made to sound via electronic recording. François Bayle aimed for a composition with so-called "images-de-sons" (sound images), which should compensate for the missing visual information of a loudspeaker performance. "The properties of the image generally define modes of representation that imply media storage in the broadest sense, that is, any type of information chain that allows montage, reversal, transformation, extraction, detachment, synchronization, overlay, etc. .. . and a process of object language. ”In his book Musique Acousmatique he distinguishes between two types of acousmatics : banal and original. Banal in this sense is any transmission that sounds over loudspeakers or radio and thus covers the sound sources that existed during the recording. It is a matter of pure mediation. According to François Bayle , the really acousmatic is the music that is designed and projected in the form of sound images or i-sounds. In contrast to France or Canada, the term acousmatics is hardly anchored in musical consciousness in Germany. Francis Dhomont bears the main responsibility for establishing the term in Canada .

The acousmatic way of hearing

The acousmatics presents itself as the hearing of hearing. The auditory perception has changed: "What sounds is no longer bound to its cause (which will remain hidden, definitely somewhere else in space and earlier in time), but to its captured form." It is closed by an intervening carrier medium become a sound image. A listening-only situation arises because attention is not influenced by a visible or predictable sound source. Acoustics and visibility of the sound production or reproduction are mutually exclusive. Francis Dhomont states that acousmatic music “was designed from the start to be heard without visual interventions.” And Pierre Schaeffer says in Traité des Objets Musicaux that it is no longer a matter of how subjective hearing interprets reality. Hearing itself now becomes the phenomenon to be contemplated.

Performance practice

The acousmatic music is developed in the studio and projected in the concert hall when it is performed. François Bayle invented the acousmonium for the “moment of practical performance adaptation of an individual musical object space to the acoustic characteristics of the concert auditorium” . This is an instrument for staging the audible. The composer / musician sits at the mixer and has the opportunity to design his work. By deciding which moments of the composition are reproduced from which of the numerous loudspeakers of the acousmonium , the composer / musician distributes the work in the room, so to speak. This process, the spatial interpretation of a work, is also known as 'diffusion', but it should not be confused with the same term in acoustics . In 1974 the first concert with an acousmonium of the Groupe de recherches musicales took place in Espace Cardin, Paris. Were listed L'Expérience Acoustique and the world premiere of vibration composées by François Bayle.

Problems of acousmatics

François Bayle is of the opinion that acousmatics could have been successful thanks to the medium of radio if it had been content with the status of an applied art, but the discipline wanted to be specifically musical. In spite of this, an extensive repertoire of acousmatic music has emerged so far , which remains difficult to access. The difficulties of acousmatics lie mainly in the fixation of the production studios, the high technical effort required for reproduction during the performance and the limitations of the traditional performance rooms, which are usually set up with a view to instrumental concerts. However, there are now concert halls in some facilities that are prepared for these requirements, such as the Espace de projection of the IRCAM , the Curt Sachs Hall of the Berlin State Institute for Music Research , which has an integrated 16- channel sound system with 93 loudspeakers , or - as an extreme - the wave field synthesis lecture hall 104 of the TU Berlin with over 2700 loudspeakers that can be controlled via 832 independent channels.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ François Bayle: "Glossary" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (eds.): Composition and musicology in dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. P. 181.
  2. ↑ Christoph von Blumröder: "François Bayles Musique Acousmatique" in: Christoph von Blumröder (Hrsg.): Compositional stations of the 20th century. Debussy, Webern, Messiaen, Boulez, Cage, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Höller, Bayle. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Münster, 2004. P. 192.
  3. ^ François Bayle: "Principles of Akusmatik" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (Eds.): Composition and Musicology in Dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. P. 15.
  4. ↑ Christoph von Blumröder: "François Bayles Musique Acousmatique" in: Christoph von Blumröder (Hrsg.): Compositional stations of the 20th century. Debussy, Webern, Messiaen, Boulez, Cage, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Höller, Bayle. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Münster, 2004. P. 192.
  5. ↑ http://jeromepeignot.free.fr/
  6. ^ François Bayle: "Glossary" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (eds.): Composition and musicology in dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. P. 183.
  7. ^ François Bayle: "Glossary" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (eds.): Composition and musicology in dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. P. 183.
  8. ^ François Bayle: "The acousmatic music or the art of projected sounds" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (eds.): Composition and musicology in dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. S. 155.
  9. ^ François Bayle: "The acousmatic music or the art of projected sounds" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (eds.): Composition and musicology in dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. S. 153.
  10. ↑ Christoph von Blumröder: "François Bayles Musique Acousmatique" in: Christoph von Blumröder (Hrsg.): Compositional stations of the 20th century. Debussy, Webern, Messiaen, Boulez, Cage, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Höller, Bayle. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Münster, 2004. P. 192.
  11. ^ François Bayle: "Glossary" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (eds.): Composition and musicology in dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. P. 181.
  12. ^ François Bayle: "The acousmatic music or the art of projected sounds" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (eds.): Composition and musicology in dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. pp. 151–153.
  13. ↑ Christoph von Blumröder: Musique concrète - Electronic Music - Akusmatik. Concepts of electroacoustic music . Internet publication of the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe 2011 ( Memento from July 12, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  14. ^ François Bayle: "Principles of Akusmatik" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (Eds.): Composition and Musicology in Dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. S. 17.
  15. ^ François Bayle: "Principles of Akusmatik" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (Eds.): Composition and Musicology in Dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. S. 5.
  16. ^ François Bayle: "Principles of Akusmatik" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (Eds.): Composition and Musicology in Dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. S. 5.
  17. ^ François Bayle: "Glossary" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (eds.): Composition and musicology in dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. P. 181.
  18. ↑ Christoph von Blumröder: Musique concrète - Electronic Music - Akusmatik. Concepts of electroacoustic music . Internet publication of the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe 2011 ( Memento from July 12, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  19. ↑ Christoph von Blumröder: Musique concrète - Electronic Music - Akusmatik. Concepts of electroacoustic music . Internet publication of the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe 2011 ( Memento from July 12, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  20. ↑ Pierre Schaeffer: "Acousmatics" in: Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner (ed.): Audio Culture. Readings in Modern Music. Continuum, New York, 2004. p. 77.
  21. ↑ Christoph von Blumröder: "François Bayles Musique Acousmatique" in: Christoph von Blumröder (Hrsg.): Compositional stations of the 20th century. Debussy, Webern, Messiaen, Boulez, Cage, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Höller, Bayle. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Münster, 2004. S. 209.
  22. ^ François Bayle: "Glossary" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (eds.): Composition and musicology in dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. pp. 183–185.
  23. ^ Austin Larry: Sound Diffusion in Composition and Performance: An Interview with Denis Smalley . In: Computer Music Journal . 24, No. 2, 2000, pp. 10-21.
  24. ^ François Bayle: "The acousmatic music or the art of projected sounds" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (eds.): Composition and musicology in dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. S. 175.
  25. ^ François Bayle: "The acousmatic music or the art of projected sounds" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (eds.): Composition and musicology in dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. S. 173.
  26. ^ François Bayle: "The acousmatic music or the art of projected sounds" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (eds.): Composition and musicology in dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. P. 171.
  27. ^ François Bayle: "The acousmatic music or the art of projected sounds" in: Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (eds.): Composition and musicology in dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007. S. 173.
  28. ↑ Public address system for the Curt Sachs Hall on the SIM website, accessed on October 19, 2012

literature

  • Theodor W. Adorno : About the musical use of the radio , in: Ders .: Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 15 . Frankfurt am Main 1976, pp. 369-401.
  • Roland Barthes : Musica Practica , in: L'Arc No. 40. Paris 1976, pp. 15-17.
  • Walter Benjamin : The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility , Frankfurt am Main 1963.
  • Simon Emmerson, Denis Smalley : Electro-Acoustic Music , Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Access [March, 19th 2008]), < http://www.grovemusic.com.ubproxy.ub.uni-heidelberg.de >
  • Sven Hahne, Niels Hofheinz, Wolfgang Kirchheim: Tradition and Discipline. Unedited manuscripts on New Acousmatics . Free internet publication 2006.
  • Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder (Eds.): Composition and Musicology in Dialogue IV (2000-2003). François Bayle. L'image de son / sound images. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2007.
  • Pierre Schaeffer: "Acousmatics" in: Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner (eds.): Audio Culture. Readings in Modern Music. Continuum, New York, 2004.
  • Pierre Schaeffer: Traité des objects musicaux . Paris 1977.
  • Christoph von Blumröder: "François Bayles Musique Acousmatique" in: Christoph von Blumröder (Hrsg.): Compositional stations of the 20th century. Debussy, Webern, Messiaen, Boulez, Cage, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Höller, Bayle. (Signals from Cologne. Contributions to the music of the time) LIT Verlag, Münster, 2004.
  • Christoph von Blumröder: Musique concrète - electronic music - acousmatics. Concepts of electroacoustic music . Internet publication of the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe 2011

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