Awareness of what contributes to a sound’s identity and memorability is essential to a recurrence-based approach. In order to hear a recurrence, the sound material must be striking and differentiated from its surroundings in some way in the first instance—it must be memorable. The strength and nature of individual sound identities will affect initial perceptions and the interpretation of subsequent occurrences. If sound material appears among other sounds of similar type, or if it is masked in some way, its potential to make an impact may be reduced.
The Oxford English Dictionary illuminates how identity might be considered:
Identity…1 the fact of being who or what a person or thing is…the characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is… 2 a close similarity or affinity [1].
Thus, identity is determined by the characteristics particular to a person or thing, and the perception of recurrence within a musical work will depend on the presence of sufficient common properties among the array of the instances. In adopting a recurrence-based approach to acousmatic music, it is assumed that memory has a fundamental role in the musical experience, and that the remembered sound materials have a structural significance.
Consideration must be given to factors that might make an identity perceptually striking within musical contexts, and to how such identities might be described. Striking features might well be the significant aspects of similarity that define and unite families of identities. Significant aspects of identity can be further described in terms of contour, spectromorphology, source association and gist.
Both composers and cognitive psychologists have noted the significance of shape and contour to the identity of musical materials. For example, Schoenberg’s ideas regarding composition and analysis appear to focus on rhythm and pitch relationships founded on motives and their variations. “The motive should produce unity, relationship, coherence, logic, comprehensibility and fluency” and should feature “intervals and rhythms, combined to produce a memorable shape or contour” [2]. Similarly, Harvey has emphasised the importance of shape in the melodic writing in his acousmatic work, Ritual Melodies, stating that:
I wanted something more memorable so that when it recurred after a long absence – after so many minutes – it would still be recognisable, therefore form is present. If you don’t recognize it, there is no form. If it is played simultaneously with several different melodies, different musical activities, it is still recognizable, it is a strong enough shape and personality [3].
Schoenberg’s and Harvey’s concerns for strong shape or contour in the creation of musical identities are corroborated by cognitive research. Watkins and Dyson suggest that contour aids melodic identification, and is an important factor in musical memory [4]. Similarly, Dowling has noted that, with both tonal and non-tonal melodies, listeners find it “difficult to distinguish exact transpositions [of a novel melody] from other same-contour imitations” [5]. This, again, implies that the impression of an overall shape is a factor significant to melodic identity.
The discussion of sound ‘shapes’ and identities within electroacoustic music contexts requires a flexible attitude to pitch space and contour that extends beyond conventional notions of tempered intervals and pitch combinations, due to the broad range of sounds that may be encountered. All sounds are experienced in terms of their morphological structure and spectral content, and the ways these change over time give a sound its identity. Smalley’s concept of spectromorphology applies this view of aural perception to musical contexts:
Spectromorphology is concerned with perceiving and thinking in terms of spectral energies and shapes in space, their behaviour, their motion and growth processes, and their relative functions in a musical context [6].
The spectromorphological view provides ways to consider and describe the sonic characteristics of all manner of sound materials in terms of spectral and morphological change, which in turn illuminates how sound identities might be perceived. A sound’s most dominantly perceived characteristics are fundamental to its identity, and these can be usefully described in terms of its spectromorphological makeup [7]. In many instances, the perception of ‘an identity’ will be determined by the striking aspects of the sound material’s spectromorphology, and less by the presumed source of the sound.
A fundamental distinction between electroacoustic music and purely instrumental music is the potential to incorporate the sounds of real-world phenomena. Acousmatic musical works can feature sounds heard in ‘everyday’ situations that are not traditionally considered the property of musical exploration. The inclusion of such material brings with it the possibility of source recognition, which may be accompanied by various associations with real-world experience [8]. This will influence the perception of that sound’s identity, and these associations may have a significant effect on the interpretation of the work. Smalley’s concept of source bonding highlights “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” [9]. Such bonding will influence the perception of a sound’s identity and its musical significance. Indeed, listening responses focused on the presumed sound source may be unavoidable, and this must be considered in both analytical and compositional practices based on recurrent sound identities.
The detailed description permitted by spectromorphological terminology and the consideration of source association facilitate discussion of the wide range of sound material encountered in acousmatic works. However, degrees of detail are not necessarily apprehended immediately when many concurrent events occur, yet a sense of the most striking events and their main features can still be grasped. Kendall notes that listening in detail can often make demands that exceed the listener’s mental resources at that moment. Accordingly, he proposes that “even when ‘events’ cannot be completely assimilated, the listener can hold onto the ‘gist’ of ‘events’” [10]. Gist can be described as “what the perceiver acquires from a brief glimpse of something and usually includes the most salient features of the situation” and “its content typically includes perceptual features and conceptual relationships” [11]. This suggests that musical contexts are quickly assessed and abbreviated based on the features that are perceived as most important or striking. Indeed, these features might determine impressions of distinctness and identity in the first instance, and influence how sound entities are subsequently appraised and interpreted.
[1] "Identity", Oxford Dictionaries [Online], Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010 [http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/identity (10th September 2011)].
[2] SCHOENBERG, Arnold, Fundamentals of Musical Composition, edited by Gerald Strand and Leonard Stein, London, Faber and Faber Limited, 1967, p. 8.
[3] WHITTALL, Arnold, Jonathan Harvey, London, Faber & Faber Limited, 1999, p. 22.
[4] WATKINS, Anthony J. and DYSON, Mary C., "On the Perceptual Organisation of Tone Sequences and Melodies", in HOWELL, Peter, CROSS, Ian and WEST, Robert (eds.), Musical Structure and Cognition, London, Academic Press Inc. Ltd, 1985, p. 84.
[5] DOWLING, W. Jay, "Melodic Contour in Hearing and Remembering Melodies", in AIELLO, Rita and SLOBODA, John A. (eds.), Musical Perceptions, New York, Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 180.
[6] SMALLEY, Denis, "Spectromorphology: Explaining Sound-Shapes", Organised Sound, vol. 2, n° 2, 1997, p. 124.
[7] Spectromorphology addresses issues including gesture and texture, expectation, structural levels, structural functions, motion and growth process, behaviour, spectra, and space and spatiomorphology. These concepts will be defined and referred to when relevant in the forthcoming discussion.
[8] This process of recognition can be described as “the automatic activation of some particular contents of long-term memory that have some relation or association with current perception” (SNYDER, Bob, Music and Memory: An Introduction, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2000, p. 10). Composers have drawn on listeners’ real-world experiences before the advent of electroacoustic music by imitating natural phenomena, potentially establishing associations using conventional musical parameters. This kind of ‘figuralism’ can be found in, for example, the wave-like textures of Debussy’s La Mer. Such associations remain relevant within acousmatic contexts. The opening of Bayle’s Grandeur Nature features extreme low- and high-frequency sound materials that define the bounds of spectral space in a manner analogous to the ground and the upper reaches of the earth’s atmosphere. The integration of quotations from pre-existing works is also relevant here. Inclusion of material from Schaeffer’s Étude aux objets in the final minutes of Novars potentially connects to previous listening experience of that work (assuming it has been heard before), forming a cultural reference beyond Novars, as well as correspondences to material earlier within Novars. One might also consider the integration of national anthems in Stockhausen’s Hymnen, or the inclusion of Bruder Martin in Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, both similarly playing on previous listening experience.
[9] SMALLEY, Denis, op. cit., p. 110.
[10] KENDALL, Gary, "What Is an Event? The Event Schema, Circumstances, Metaphor and Gist", International Computer Music Conference, Belfast, 2008, p. 7.
[11] Ibid.