L’Objet Sonore Maintenant: Pierre Schaeffer, sound objects and the phenomenological reduction

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

Sound Synthesis Procedures as Texts: An Ontological Politics in Electroacoustic and Computer Music

“…What is left behind, following this intentional sensory bracketing, is what Schaeffer called the "acousmatic": the content of my perception rather than its cause. The word-itself derived from the Ancient Greek acousmatikoi-is a reference to the name given to Pythagoras' disciples, who would listen to the master's lectures from behind a curtain (Kane 2007). This occultation of the means of production has lent to electroacoustic music an enduring origin story, but it should be remembered that, for Schaeffer, the acousmatic situation was determined, first of all, by technology.…”

“…This occultation of the means of production has lent to electroacoustic music an enduring origin story, but it should be remembered that, for Schaeffer, the acousmatic situation was determined, first of all, by technology. He thought that sound reproduction, radio, and telecommunications technologies were essentially habituating us to circumstances that Pythagoras had to artificially construct; everyday auditory experience in the modern world meant listening to disembodied voices (Kane 2007). In the majority of electronic music of the past 15 years, this technologically determined acousmatic reduction has been imposed by the use of a personal computer, a black box with its own economy of visibility and invisibility, secrecy and transparency.…”

Contexts of/as Resistance

“…The philosophical coherence of Schaeffer's claims for this new domain as absolute and ahistorical is critiqued elsewhere (Kane, 2007); his ontologising zeal is, moreover, belied by digital sound's propensity for reproducibility and remediation, which pleads for a historic positioning of musique concrète. 6 Of specific interest for this reflection on contexts, however, is the fact that the Schaefferian sound object ostensibly stripped of indicial and semantic attributes managed, albeit momentarily, to win such a compellingly essentialist hearing.…”

Acousmatic Fabrications: Les Paul and the ‘Les Paulverizer’

“…5. For more on Schaeffer and the phenomenological meaning of the 'sound object', see Kane (2007). 6.…”