Acousmatic music
The term acousmatic (Greek Akousma " auditory perception " ) refers to music, the sound generating means are not visible and mostly unidentifiable. It creates a situation where pure listening, because the attention is not affected by a visible or predictable sound source.
Conceptual history
The term acousmatic refers to a Pythagorean tradition, according to which only his closest students were allowed to see him in his lessons. The new students had to sit behind a curtain and were able to see neither the explanatory gestures nor the physiognomy of Pythagoras. You thus missing all the visual information so that their understanding of teaching only through an intense listening was possible. These students were named acousmatics because they were dependent on the acoustic perception. With the advent of radiophony and the emergence of the first noise music, the term has also been discussed as a designation of music. The writer Jérome Peignot used in the 20th century for the first time the term " bruit acousmatique " (Fr. " acousmatic " sound ). In 1955 he suggested the expression in Musique Animée, a program of the Groupe de Musique concrète ago: "A acousmatic sound, it says ( in the dictionary ) is a sound that can be heard without its cause can be detected. " In Traité des Objets Musicaux (1966 ) Pierre Schaeffer uses the term again and refer him there on a reduced hearing. He compares the role of his tape recorder with the Pythagorean curtain. However, he has also made much use of the term. 1974 François Bayle suggested before, to use the term acousmatic to denote the specific listening conditions of music that is intended for the exclusive mediation by means of recordings. The term electroacoustic music was no longer appropriate to refer to the musical work in the studio, since electro-acoustic musical instruments existed and therefore a new term for this Arte of music was needed. Bayle used since the concept of Musique Acousmatique ( acousmatic music) to describe music, designed in the studio and is projected in the concert hall. In this sense, the term acousmatic has since established itself in the field of contemporary music.
The acousmatic music
François Bayle's name Musique Acousmatique refers to two circumstances of acousmatic music: On the one hand it is clear that the sound generating means are not visible and often can not be accurately identified and on the other is referred to the situation of pure listening. The term acousmatic therefore generally referred to a musical- acoustic event, which sounded not is directly related to its origin. All music, the only for the mediation of recordings ( LP, CD, MP3, etc. ) is created thus, acousmatic music, as opposed to the live music (which can also be recorded, but not, or not exclusively, for the is determined phonograms ). Acousmatic music is so that can be brought from intentional reasons only indirectly via electronic recording sounded. François Bayle sought a composition with so-called "images -de- sons" ( sound images ), which should compensate for the lack of visual information from a speaker performance. " Due to the properties of the image generally of representation are defined that imply a media storage in the broadest sense, that is, any type of information linking, which allows assembly, inversion, transformation, extraction, dissolution-out, synchronization, overlay, etc. ... ., and a method of object - language conditional " in his book Musique Acousmatique he distinguishes two types of acousmatics. banal and original banal in this sense is any transfer, the sound through speakers or radio and thus obscures the sound sources, but during have existed recording. This is a pure mediation. 's Really acousmatic François Bayle, according to the music that is designed and projected in the form of sound images or i- tunes. Unlike France or Canada, the term is acousmatics in Germany hardly anchored in the musical consciousness. For the establishment of the term in Canada Francis Dhomont has the primary responsibility.
The acousmatic of hearing
The acousmatics presents itself as the hearing of the hearing. The auditory perception has changed: "That which is heard, is no longer bound to his cause ( which will remain hidden, definitely somewhere in space, and earlier in time ), but at the captured form. " By intervening switched carrier medium is to become a sound. It creates a situation where pure listening, because the attention is not affected by a visible or predictable sound source. Acousmatics and visibility of sound production and reproduction - close are mutually exclusive. Francis Dhomont represents that: The acousmatic music " was designed from the beginning for it to be heard without visual interventions. " And Pierre Schaeffer says in Traité des Objets Musicaux that it no longer comes to be interpreted as a subjective listening reality. The hearing itself is now in the phenomenon, what it is to look at.
Performance practice
The acousmatic music is developed in the studio and in their projected performance in the concert hall. For the "moment of performance practice adapting an individual musical object - space to the acoustic characteristics of the Konzertauditoriums " François Bayle invented the acousmonium. This is a tool for the staging of the audible. The composer / musician sits on the mixer and has the opportunity to make its interpretation. In 1974, the first concert with a acousmonium the Groupe de Recherche Musicales at the Espace Cardin, Paris took place. Were performed L' Acoustique Expérience and the world premiere of vibration composées by François Bayle.
Problems of acousmatic
François Bayle is of the opinion that the acousmatics thanks to the medium of radio success could have had if she had been content with the status of applied art, but the discipline would be specific musical. Nevertheless, so far a vast repertoire of acousmatic music is created, but which remains difficult to explore. The difficulties of acousmatics lie mainly in the fixity of the production studios, the high technical complexity for playback on the performance and the limitations of traditional performance spaces, which were generally built with regard to instrumental concerts. However, there are today in some facilities concert halls, which are prepared for these changes, such as the Espace de projection of IRCAM, the Curt -Sachs -Saal of the Berlin State Institute for Music Research, which has an integrated 16- channel sound system with 93 speakers, or - as an extreme - the wave field synthesis auditorium 104 of the Technical University of Berlin with over 2700 speakers, which can be controlled over 832 independent channels.