The Sound Object
In the early 1950s, inspired by Phenomenology, French composer and engineer Pierre Schaeffer coined the term Reduced Listening to describe the new field of acousmatic research he was investigating.
“[He] gave the name reduced listening to the listening mode that focuses on the traits of the sound itself, independent of its cause and of its meaning” (Chion).
Schaeffer developed the idea of the l'objet sonore as the smallest self-contained acoustic element for analysis, categorisation, organisation and manipulation. A new magnetic tape music was born. Michel Chion writes, "concrete music, in its conscious refusal of the visual, carries with it visions that are more beautiful than images could ever be."
In developing his ideas on Reduced Listening, Schaeffer was influenced by ancient accounts of the Pythagorean order. In his book Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice, Brian Kane writes how:
“followers of Pythagoras underwent a three-year probationary period, directly followed by a five-year period of ‘silence’, before being admitted to Pythagoras' inner circle as mathêmatikoi (learned). The use of silence related to the protocols of rituals connected with the mystery-like instruction and religious ceremonies of the Pythagorean order. These ceremonies took place behind a veil or curtain with only those who had passed the five-year test being allowed to see their teacher face to face; the remaining students partaking acousmatically.”
Schaeffer coined the term the Acousmatique to define the listening experience of this new tape-based music that reached the listener via loudspeaker technology. The word comes from the Greek Akousmata (“oral saying”), considered to be the collection of all the sayings of Pythagoras as divine dogma.
A Purposeless Play
In America composer John Cage was interested in Eastern thought. Around the late 1940s an important influence on him was the art historian and philosopher of Indian art Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Borrowing ideas from Coomaraswamy as well as from the Indian musician Gita Sarabhai, who Cage met in 1946, the composer claimed that the purpose of art was to imitate nature in her manner of operations. He went on to propose that the purpose of music “was to quiet and sober the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences”. In his 1961 book Silence: Lectures and Writings Cage famously wrote:
“Let sounds be themselves rather than vehicles for man-made theories of expressions of human sentiments.”
The Soundscape
Beginning in the late-1960s, Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer began to examine the relationship - mediated through sound - between human beings and their environment. This led to the development of Acoustic Ecology and Soundscape studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Schafer referred to the Soundscape as an acoustic environment consisting of events heard, rather than objects seen. In his 1977 book The Tuning of the World, Schafer describes Hi-Fi soundscapes as those spaces that preserve sonic clarity and perspective as a result of low background noise. Lo-Fi soundscapes on the other hand are found in loud, busy urban centres where there is “no distance, only presence”.
Writing in the early 1990s, electroacoustic composer Barry Truax, who along with Schafer was one of the original members of the Vancouver soundscape project, describes the variance in contextuality of acoustic sounds when compared with their electronic reproductions:
“In the acoustic world, sound is constrained by being tied to its context, in relation to which it derives at least part of its meaning. In the electroacoustic world, sound can be taken out of its original context and put via a loudspeaker into any other, where its meaning may be contradictory to that environment.”
For Schafer, the splitting of sound from source is a pathological (“schizophonic”) product of modern technology and mass urbanisation.
Deep Listening
In 1989 composer Pauline Oliveros coined the term Deep Listening to describe a radical practice of auditory attentiveness. She writes:
“Deep Listening involves going below the surface of what is heard, expanding to the whole field of sound while finding focus. This is the way to connect with the acoustic environment, all that inhabits it, and all that there is.”
Oliveros shared Cage and Schaeffer's interest in attending to the sounds themselves. However, she was also actively engaged in the neuroscience of various meditation practices, as well as the wider ecological field of all acoustic activity; the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment.