Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wzw2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-13T11:31:05.244Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Primacy of the Ear’ – But Whose Ear?: The case for auraldiversity in sonic arts practice and discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2019

John Levack Drever
John Levack Drever*
Affiliation:
Music Dept, Goldsmiths, University of London, SE14 6NW
*
*Email: j.drever@gold.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Sixty years on from Pierre Schaeffer’s call for ‘primacy of the ear’ (primauté de l’oreille), this article asks an ostensibly simple question: whose ear/aural perception is being referred to when we talk of and compose under this guiding principle? Is there a tacit preselected audiometric norm or even a pair of golden ears, at its core? The article will problematise the uncompromising modernist notion espoused by Babbitt of a ‘suitably equipped receptor’ (Babbitt 1958), and posit examples of well-known composers whose hearing markedly diverged from the otologically normal, an acoustics standard from which A-weighted decibels is predicated (ISO 226:2003). In conclusion the concept of auraldiverse hearing is proposed and creative strategies that eschew or problematise auraltypical archetypes in sonic arts practice and theory wherever they may lie are encouraged.

Type
Articles
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 24 , Special Issue 1: Perceptual Issues Surrounding the Electroacoustic Music Experience , April 2019 , pp. 85 - 95
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press, 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Action on Hearing Loss. 2018. Facts and Figures. www.actiononhearingloss.org.uk/about-us/our-research-and-evidence/facts-and-figures/(accessed June 2018).Google Scholar
Adams, R., Reiss, B. and Serlin, D. 2015. Keywords for Disability Studies. New York: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Adorno, T. W. 2002. On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening (1938). In R. Leppert (ed.) Essays on Music. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ahmed, S. 2006. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Angliss, S. 2018. Blog. www.sarahangliss.com/portfolio/infrasound-the-pipe (accessed June 2018).Google Scholar
Armstrong, T. 2010. The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Differently Wird Brain. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press Google Scholar
Babbitt, M. 1998. Who Cares if You Listen? In R. P. Morgan (ed.) Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History. Vol. 7: The Twentieth Century. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Ballard, J. G. 2009. The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
BBC Design & Engineering. 2017. Audio Quality: Information & Standards for Radio.Google Scholar
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio/commissioning/TechnicalSpecificationRadio.pdf Google Scholar
Blauert, J. 1996. Spatial Hearing. The Psychophysics of Human Sound Localization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bregman, A. S. 1990. Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of Sound. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
British Society of Audiology. 2011. Recommended Procedure: Pure-tone Air-conduction and Bone-conduction Threshold Audiometry With and Without Masking. Berkshire: British Society of Audiology.Google Scholar
Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that Matter. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Clarke, E. F. 2005. Ways of Listening: An Ecological Approach to the Perception of Musical Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cook, N. 2000. Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cox, R., Irving, A. and Wright, C. (eds.) 2016. Beyond Text?: Critical Practices and Sensory Anthropology. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Dack, J. 2015. Correspondence with the author, 6 January.Google Scholar
Dotolo, M. 2010. Of Ultra Sound, Art and Science. Hz 15, September. www.hz-journal.org/n20/index (accessed June 2018).Google Scholar
Drever, J. 1923. The Psychology of Everyday Life. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Drever, J. L. 2002. Soundscape Composition: The Convergence of Ethnography and Acousmatic Music. Organised Sound 7(1): 21–27.Google Scholar
Drever, J. L. 1999. The exploitation of ‘tangible ghosts’: Conjectures on soundscape recording and its reappropriation in sound art. Organised Sound 4(1): 25–29.Google Scholar
Drever, J. L. 2015. Sanitary Soundscapes: The Noise Effects from Ultra-Rapid ‘Ecological’ Hand Dryers on Vulnerable Subgroups in Publicly Accessible Toilets. Paper presented at the 2nd International Conference on Hyperacusis (ICH2), Birkeck College, University of London.Google Scholar
Drever, J. L. 2017. The Case for Auraldiversity in Acoustic Regulations and Practice: The Hand Dryer Noise Story. Proceedings of the 24th International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV24), LondonGoogle Scholar
EARs 2. 2018. Metrology for Modern Hearing Assessment and Protecting Public Health from Emerging Noise Sources. www.ears-project.eu/ears2-home.html (accessed on June 2018).Google Scholar
Emmerson, S. 1986. The Relation of Language to Materials . In S. Emmerson (ed.) The Language of Electroacoustic Music. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press.Google Scholar
Ford, I. 2010. A Field Guide to Earthlings: An Autistic/Asperger View of Neurotypical Behaviour. Albuquerque, NM: Ian Ford Software.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 2001. The Order of Things: Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Frisina, R. D. 2010. Cognition and Emotion in the Auditory Brain. In A. R. Palmer and A. Rees (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Auditory Science: The Auditory Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gibson, J. J. 1966. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Gibson, J. J. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Glennie., E. 2015. Hearing Essay. www.evelyn.co.uk/hearing-essay/ (accessed June 2018).Google Scholar
Grandin, T. and Panek, R. 2014. The Autistic Brain: Exploring the Strength of a Different Kind of Mind. London: Rider Books.Google Scholar
Harley, J. 2002. The Electroacoustic Music of Iannis Xenakis. Computer Music Journal 26(1): 33–57.Google Scholar
HEFUA. 2018. Health Effects of Ultrasound in Air (HEFUA). https://sites.google.com/site/hefua2/(accessed June 2018).Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J. and Norenzayan, A. 2010. The Weirdest People in the World? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33(2–3): 61–83.Google Scholar
Holmes, J. A. 2017. Expert Listening Beyond the Limits of Hearing: Music and Deafness. Journal of the American Musicological Society 70(1): 171–220.Google Scholar
Hugill, A. 2018. Blog. www.andrewhugill.com/blog/ (accessed June 2018).Google Scholar
Husserl, E. 2012. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson. Oxford: Routledge.Google Scholar
Huxtable, R. J. 2000. The Deafness of Beethoven: A Paradigm of Hearing Problems. Proceedings of the Western Pharmacology Society 43: 1–8.Google Scholar
Ihde, D. 2007. Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound, 2nd edn. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
ISO. 2003. Acoustics – Normal Equal-loudness-level Contours ISO 226:2003. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.Google Scholar
ISO. 2017. Acoustics – Statistical Distribution of Hearing Thresholds Related to Age and Gender ISO 7029:201. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.Google Scholar
Kubba, A. K. and Young, M. 1996. Ludwig van Beethoven: A Medical Biography. Lancet 347(8995): 167–170.Google Scholar
Leighton, T. G. 2016. Are Some People Suffering as a Result of Increasing Mass Exposure of the Public to Ultrasound in Air? Proceedings of the Royal Society, A 472: 20150624.Google Scholar
Leventhall, G. 2003. A Review of Published Research on Low Frequency Noise and its Effects. London: DEFRA.Google Scholar
McKenna, L., Baguley, D. and McFerran, D. 2010. Living with Tinnitus and Hyperacusis. London: Sheldon Press.Google Scholar
Moles, A. 1968. Information Theory and Esthetic Perception, trans. J. E. Cohen. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Organised Sound . 2018. Home page. Cambridge University Press. www.cambridge.org/core/journals/organised-sound/most-cited (accessed June 2018).Google Scholar
Paparrigopoulos, K. 2012. The Sounds of the Environment in Xenakis’ Electroacoustic Music. In M. Solomos (ed.) Proceedings of the International Symposium Xenakis. La musique électroacoustique/Xenakis. The electroacoustic music, Université Paris, 8 May.Google Scholar
Pesic, A. and Pesic, P. 2015. The Sound of Deafness: Smetana and Traumatic Tinnitus. Music & Medicine 7: 9–13.Google Scholar
Sacks, O. 2007. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. London: Picador.Google Scholar
Schaeffer, P. 1957. Vers une musique expérimentale. Revue musicale, no. 236. Paris: Ed. Richard-Masse.Google Scholar
Schaeffer, P. 1966. Traité des Objets Musicaux. Essai interdisciplines. Paris: Ed. du Seuil.Google Scholar
Schaeffer, P. 1967. La Musique Concrète. Que Sais-je?, no. 1287. Paris: PUF.Google Scholar
Schaeffer, P. 1970. Machines à Communiquer 1: Genèses des Simulacres. Paris: Ed. du Seuil.Google Scholar
Schaeffer, P. 2017. Treatise on Musical Objects: An Essay across Disciplines, trans. C. North and J. Dack. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Schaeffer, P. and Reibel, G. 1998. Solfège de L’Objet Sonore. Paris: Ina-GRM.Google Scholar
Schafer, R. M. 1992. A Sound Education: 100 Exercises in Listening and Sound-Making. India River, Ontario: Arcana Editions.Google Scholar
Schafer, R. M. 1994. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and The Tuning of the World. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books.Google Scholar
Serres, M. 2008. The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies, trans. M. Sankey and P. Cowley. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Sholl, R. 2010. Olivier Messiaen and the Avant-Garde Poetics of the Messe de la Pentecote . In A. Shenton (ed.) Messiaen the Theologian. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sloboda, J. 2004. Exploring the Musical Mind: Cognition, Emotion, Ability, Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smalley, D. 1986. Spectro-morphology and Structuring Processes. In S. Emmerson (ed.) The Language of Electroacoustic Music. Basingstoke: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Smalley, D. 1997. Spectromorphology: Explaining Sound-shapes. Organised Sound 2(2): 107–126.Google Scholar
Spence, K. and Swayne, G. 1981. How Music Works. London: Collier MacMillan.Google Scholar
Sterne, J. 2012. MP3: The Meaning of a Format. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sterne, J. 2015. Hearing. In D. Novak and M. Sakakeeny (eds.) Keyword in Sound. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Stocker, M. 2013. Hear Where We Are: Sound, Ecology, and Sense of Place. New York: Springer. Kindle Edition.Google Scholar
Subotnik, R. R. 1991. Individualism in Western Art Music and Its Cultural Costs. In Developing Variations: Style and Ideology in Western Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Tenney, J. 1992. META † HODOS: A Phenomenology of Twentieth-Century Musical Materials and an Approach to the Study of Form and META Meta † Hodos, 2nd edn. Lebanon, NH: Frog Peak Music.Google Scholar
Terrugi, D. 2015. Musique Concrète Today: Its Reach, Evolution of Concepts and Role in Musical Thought. Organised Sound 20(1): 51–59.Google Scholar
Tucker, J., Musgrove, A. and Reese, A. 2014. The Ability to Hear Goldcrest Song and the Implications for Bird Surveys. British Birds 107: 232–233.Google Scholar
Warren, R. M. 1999. Auditory Perception: A New Analysis and Synthesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wehrle, M. 2015. Normality and Normativity in Experience. In M. Doyon and T. Breyer (eds.) Normality in Perception. New York: MacMillan Palgrave.Google Scholar
Whiting, J. 2009. Henri Pousseur: Avant-garde Composer Seeking a Synthesis of Sound and Image. www.theguardian.com/music/2009/jun/11/obituary-henri-pousseur (accessed June 2018).Google Scholar

Discography

Smalley, D. 1992. Wind Chimes (1987). On Impacts intérieurs. Montreal: Empreintes Digitales, IMED9209-CD.Google Scholar