Chapter 2

The Question of the Listening Subject: Ecological Perspectives on Sound, Perception, and Musical Performance

Hearing comes first. Even in the mother’s womb, we experience the world through sound. The socially mediated art of listening comes to the child little by little, by being “immersed in the voices and movements that preceded his speaking even more deeply in the invisible language of touch and even that of sound within the womb” (Ihde 2007, 116). Our capacity for hearing provides us with the possibility and challenge of interacting with our environment through listening.

We seem to be biologically primed for music, interacting at a very early stage with our parents in a “proto-musical” way. This interaction is multi-modal: it “involves not just listening to but also producing patterns of sound in time, incorporates not just sound but also action, and serves a range of functions in an infant’s development” (Cross 2003, 26). The predisposition to be musical has been shown to be a cross-cultural phenomenon; recent studies find mother–infant interactions through such musical (and proto-musical) behaviour to be crucial for emotional bonding and social regulation. By locating the origin of music-making in mother–infant engagement we can also see how aspects of participation and group coordination—so typical of music in most cultures—emerge (Dissanayake 2000, 398–9, 403).

Salomé Voegelin takes this observation further, arguing for an understanding of listening as essentially inter-subjective, a process of lived experience in which listening emerges through the reciprocal relation between an empirical subject and an empirical object. “Listening to sound is where objectivity and subjectivity meet: in the experience of our own generative perception we produce the objectivity from our subjective and particular position of listening, which in its turn is constituted by the objectivity of the object as a prior moment of hearing, subjective and particular” (Voegelin 2010, 14). Of particular importance is how Voegelin’s emphasis on the “formlessness” of the experiential subject signals an openness that surpasses the division of subject and object: “the sonic object/phenomenon blasts the systemic and rational reality through its insistence on being heard, being experienced rather than abstracted” (ibid., 15).

The first project I’ll talk about is ULTRACHUNK from 2018, which was a collaboration with the Turkish artist and technologist Memo Akten. Memo did a PhD in machine learning at Goldsmiths and teaches at UCSD now. Memo and I were both artists in residence at Somerset House Studios in London. They paired us up because we both, in conversations, said we were very interested in machine learning, which led to ULTRACHUNK.

We made it as follows: I spent a year recording videos of myself improvising. I spent a very weird year, which was sort of training for the pandemic, in that every day I had to sit with my laptop and improvise, making a video of myself improvising to make training data for Memo. Memo then took that training data and made an architecture of six different neural networks called GRANNMA—because all coders love a cheesy acronym for their systems—Granular Neural Net for Music and Audio. And he trained those neural nets on all the material that I created. So we are now able, live in performance, to use these neural nets to generate new material as I’m performing.

Wieck, like Chopin, admired La Sonnambula, in which he believed the writing was truly vocal. Adelina Patti’s recordings are very precious because she studied with musicians who had been involved in the first performances of some of Bellini’s operas. Consequently, we can take her style as historically authentic. She was sixty-three when she recorded the aria “Ah! non credea mirarti” from La Sonnambula, and we must remember that this is a very early recording, made in 1906. Nevertheless, it is obvious that there is a great distance between this bel canto and our current preference for powerful voices that project the sound. At least five other very interesting qualities can be observed:

• a very light vibrato overall;
  • the use, however, of some special effects on certain notes for expressive purposes—in particular, a kind of vocal tremolo which is very different from our modern conception of the vibrato;
• a linear rubato that is characteristic of bel canto and comes from the sprezzatura of the seconda pratica, and in which the singer is completely independent of the orchestra, which plays strictly in time
• flexibility of tempo, including the use of accelerando and ritardando;
• the use of extemporised embellishments in specific places, a tradition that had been passed on from the first performance. 

The connection between vocal and pianistic techniques as taught by Wieck is obvious. In chapter 8, he writes explicitly that pianists must practise touch as singers practise tone. The same relaxation and ease are required, and beauty of sound is ensured by a perfectly controlled technique. The voice shouldn’t be overworked; and the same applies to the piano, which shouldn’t be played beyond its limits. In this, Wieck’s teaching is closely parallel to Chopin’s, as the latter insisted on the importance of sound quality and ease of playing. His students reported that he always wanted them to play in a flowing way. For Chopin as for Jenny Lind, an easy production of tone wasn’t compatible with the sound projection required in very large rooms. Chopin preferred playing in salons, and the greater part of Lind’s career was as a recitalist and oratorio singer. Numerous accounts indicate that Chopin’s tone palette included nuances that are hardly audible. I will give several examples.

In a deeper sense, experimentation is not the act of conducting experiments (and even less of testing). Aesthetic experimentation relates primarily to a completely new orientation of the senses and of reason, aiming to reconfigure the sensible.

That such reconfigurations are only possible after a profound consideration of the epistemic complexity of aesthetic things is the inevitable and necessary condition for creative problematisation—that is to say, for artistic research. From this perspective, artistic research therefore happens when:

1. the epistemic complexity of a given object of inquiry is scrutinised; 
2. the constitutive things of such objects of inquiry are identified and isolated; 
3. an archaeology of such things is explored; 
4. the results of this exploration are problematised with the purpose of enabling their projection into the future; 
5. the problematisation happens in precisely calibrated frameworks (experimental systems); 
6. inside an experimental system differential repetition is stimulated, enhanced, and achieved; 
7. new arrangements of things emerge as the result of a constructive (and not only theoretical) endeavour;
8. this construction of new arrangements is made by bodies-in-action, involving a renewed perspective on the kind and mode of energies at play in those actions. 

Such energies, as well as their processes of transmission are the object of the next chapter, dedicated to Gilbert Simondon’s notion of transduction.

In a deeper sense, experimentation is not the act of conducting experiments (and even less of testing). Aesthetic experimentation relates primarily to a completely new orientation of the senses and of reason, aiming to reconfigure the sensible.

That such reconfigurations are only possible after a profound consideration of the epistemic complexity of aesthetic things is the inevitable and necessary condition for creative problematisation—that is to say, for artistic research. From this perspective, artistic research therefore happens when:

1. the epistemic complexity of a given object of inquiry is scrutinised;
2. the constitutive things of such objects of inquiry are identified and isolated;
3. an archaeology of such things is explored;
4. the results of this exploration are problematised with the purpose of enabling their projection into the future;
5. the problematisation happens in precisely calibrated frameworks (experimental systems);
6. inside an experimental system differential repetition is stimulated, enhanced, and achieved;
7. new arrangements of things emerge as the result of a constructive (and not only theoretical) endeavour;
8. this construction of new arrangements is made by bodies-in-action, involving a renewed perspective on the kind and mode of energies at play in those actions.

Such energies, as well as their processes of transmission are the object of the next chapter, dedicated to Gilbert Simondon’s notion of transduction.

Although the instrumentation is not fixed, the commissioning ensemble suggest the following instruments are used:

1. at least three wind instruments
   1. must include an oboe or flute
   2. cannot include a bassoon
   3. five or more string instruments
2. for example, two violins, two violas, and one cello
   1. must include a mix of string instruments
   2. could include viols
3. two pianos
   1. with preparations if wanted
4. any five standard percussion instruments
   1. at least one of the instruments should be tuned 

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep:
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished, to die, to sleep—
To sleep, perchance to dream, ay, there’s the rub.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause.

Figure 1. Derek Jarman's garden at Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, 1996.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep:
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished, to die, to sleep—
To sleep, perchance to dream, ay, there’s the rub.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause.

Figure 2. Cherry blossom of the type depicted in the quartet.

III

My work explores these ideas directly.

Here is a track, “Waves,” created with Electroni-Kongo.

Audio example 1. James Wood, “Waves.”

Audio example 2a–d. Four sections from Joan Smith, Eggerton Palimpsests (2006) for piano, cello, and percussion, movement 1.

That such reconfigurations are only possible after a profound consideration of the epistemic complexity of aesthetic things is the inevitable and necessary condition for creative problematisation—that is to say, for artistic research.

The fourth movement, “Margin Fractures,” is particularly illustrative of Smith’s concern with listening as an act of excavation. The composer prepared a special five-track recording of this movement, enabling analytical listening through isolated elements: (1) piano, (2) cello, (3) percussion, (4) surround-left, and (5) surround-right. These latter two tracks do not introduce new musical material per se; instead, they capture the ambient reflections and spatialised resonances that Smith considered integral to the work’s identity. When the tracks are heard individually, listeners can observe how the piano’s fragmented diatonic gestures function as structural markers, how the cello’s microtonal glissandi articulate a sense of instability, and how the percussion part—consisting largely of granular textures from lightly brushed drums and bowed vibraphone—serves to erode boundaries between foreground and background.

The spatial tracks offer another interpretive layer. Smith employed subtle diffusion techniques, particularly in the manipulation of decay times and lateral movement, to suggest the persistence of earlier musical inscriptions even after the primary gestures have faded. In the complete five-track mix, these resonant halos create the impression that the ensemble is performing within an acoustically active archive, one in which every new gesture activates dormant sonic residues. The result is a work that foregrounds listening as an interpretive process, inviting the audience to reconstruct musical meaning from overlapping, partially obscured layers.

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Figure 5.8. A sculpture by Derek Jarman
in the garden at Prospect Cottage.

The greater part of this book was written during travel in South-East Asia—mainly in Hanoi, in Kuala Lumpur, and in Amino, on the Kyotango peninsula in Japan. ¹

The Hanoian auditory panorama given above, from Mai Dich in the northwest end, is typical of what R. Murray Schafer calls a lo-fi soundscape. ² Everyone needs to raise their voices in the soundscape of this rapidly transforming metropolis. The acoustic calls of street vendors, advertised and romanticised by travel agencies, are becoming increasingly rare, as they are being replaced by pre-recorded calls, played back on horn speakers that better compete with the surrounding noise.

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Eggerton Palimpsests (2006), a four-movement work for piano, cello, and percussion by the composer Joan Smith, exemplifies the composer’s enduring fascination with layered temporalities and the material traces of musical memory. The title invokes the concept of the palimpsest—manuscripts overwritten yet still bearing the imprint of earlier texts—and Smith translates this metaphor into a sonic architecture that juxtaposes new musical gestures with re-emergent remnants of earlier material.

The first movement, “Scribed Echoes,” establishes this aesthetic through fragmentary motifs exchanged between piano and cello, gradually destabilised by irregular percussion interjections. In the second movement, “Erasures,” Smith employs extended techniques—particularly col legno cello strokes and muted piano clusters—to evoke the partial obscuring of musical inscriptions. Here the percussionist’s use of brushed metals and soft mallets provides an aural representation of the act of scraping or effacement.

The fourth movement, “Margin Fractures,” is particularly illustrative of Smith’s concern with listening as an act of excavation. The composer prepared a special five-track recording of this movement, enabling analytical listening through isolated elements: (1) piano, (2) cello, (3) percussion, (4) surround-left, and (5) surround-right. These latter two tracks do not introduce new musical material per se; instead, they capture the ambient reflections and spatialised resonances that Smith considered integral to the work’s identity. When the tracks are heard individually, listeners can observe how the piano’s fragmented diatonic gestures function as structural markers, how the cello’s microtonal glissandi articulate a sense of instability, and how the percussion part—consisting largely of granular textures from lightly brushed drums and bowed vibraphone—serves to erode boundaries between foreground and background.

The platform further functions as an expedient mechanism for the dissemination of professional information, including announcements of performances, recording projects, and livestreamed events. Its temporally immediate and dialogic affordances enable performers to cultivate interactive relationships with diverse publics by responding to commentary, participating in discourse surrounding repertoire or performance practice, and offering reflective insights into technical or aesthetic concerns. In doing so, they foster participatory networks that may attract emergent or geographically dispersed audiences.

Moreover, such social media operate as a site of professional interconnectivity wherein musicians, ensembles, and institutions mutually amplify artistic initiatives, thereby enhancing cultural visibility and facilitating collaborative opportunities. Many performers also mobilise the platform for advocacy—addressing issues in music education, promoting marginalised composers, or commenting on broader cultural policy. Consequently, the site constitutes a significant locus of contemporary artistic identity formation and public engagement within the classical performance field.

Although the instrumentation is not fixed, the commissioning ensemble suggest the following instruments are used:

1. at least three wind instruments
   1. must include an oboe or flute
   2. cannot include a bassoon
   3. five or more string instruments
2. for example, two violins, two violas, and one cello
   1. must include a mix of string instruments
   2. could include viols
3. two pianos
   1. with preparations if wanted
4. any five standard percussion instruments
   1. at least one of the instruments should be tuned