This research explores the compositional relationships between acousmatic music and electronica in order to offer a way of unifying the two musical forms. The original contribution to knowledge comes from the creation of a portfolio of compositions that extend the two idioms towards one another, resulting in a series of works that are presented as a journey between and a fusion of electronica and acousmatic music. The dissertation offers a collection of associated theories that underpin the creation of the portfolio. In turn this dissertation addresses three areas that relate to compositional materials, the use of space, with consideration for both compositional and performance space, and a selection of associated cultural considerations that relate to the musics in question. The literature that relates to these three aspects is introduced and discussed with relation to the portfolio. The method behind the composition of the portfolio was not intended to present a collection of fusion works from the outset, but rather to begin composing a selection of purely acousmatic works in order to gain practical compositional understanding of the music. The process was then to grow the portfolio towards the electronica realm, and in parallel map this journey in the dissertation.

This thesis chronicles the development of Henri Fantin-Latour’s identity as a peintre-mélomane. Its purpose is to investigate how his multi-sensory impressions of music, particularly during performances of Richard Wagner’s operas and Hector Berlioz’s musical-dramatic works, would materialize into an aesthetic of vagueness. I examine the manner in which the scenic, acoustic, and acousmatic conditions in his physical environment heightened his awareness of a poetic and palpable sense of vagueness. I postulate that he aspired to simulate the sensorial aspects of his musical experiences in his operatic interpretations, lieder-inspired images, and allegorical fantasies. Through his inventive experimentation with lithography and his adaptation of painting techniques by his favorite old masters (most notably Eugène Delacroix), he developed a distinct facture that imbued his atmospheric prints, pastels, and paintings with an ineffable quality of vagueness. The correspondence between the auditory sensation, visual perception, and formal expression of the vague is also reflected in the picturesque language and musical nomenclature invoked by the contemporary criticism. The elusive sense of the musically vague in Fantin’s imaginative genre was a conspicuous leitmotif in the Salon reviews. An intertextual comparison between the musical discourse of the time and the critical reception of his artworks reveals absolute music to be a model of emulation. In light of music’s centrality in Fantin’s artistic enterprise, the conclusion explores the extent of Berlioz’s and Wagner’s aesthetic influence on his theory and practice.

This PhD in Music Composition is in the form of a written dissertation plus a series of electroacoustic music compositions on Audio CD. The thesis develops the “Segregation, Integration, Assimilation and Meaning” (SIAM) framework for the analysis of acousmatic musical works derived from research on auditory cognition. This framework is applied to a detailed analysis of Denis Smalley’s “Wind Chimes”. The dissertation finally asserts that the framework developed for the analysis of acousmatic music has been demonstrated to be effective and it discusses some implications for future research. (For complete abstract open document)

This commentary details the methods and ideas involved in creating the seven portfolio works. The portfolio is comprised of stereo acousmatic works, one mixed work and a multi-channel work, forming the practice-based research completed during the PhD programme at the University of Manchester. The works explore a number of aesthetic concepts encompassing instrumental timbres, cultural sound objects, rhythm incorporation, habitual spaces (the kitchen), imaginary and real objects (jukebox), and visual art sculpture (origami). Uniting the portfolio works is the use of Denis Smalley’s spectromorphology (1997). In its intended function, this tool provides the listener of electroacoustic music with thorough and accessible sets of vocabulary to describe sound events, structures and spaces. The use of this descriptive tool need not stop here. Fortunately, and often unconsciously for the composer, it does not, since all composers create music that is spectromorphological with or without an awareness of its presence at work. In a reversal of conventional practice, my research approaches spectromorphology from an alternate angle, viewing the vocabulary as the informer upon sound material choice and creation. In this reversal, vocabulary no longer functions descriptively; instead the vocabulary precedes the composition, directing my compositional pathway in each piece. This new application, used as a method for selecting and creating sound in the creation of each portfolio work, is an attempt at systemisation and an effort to partly remedy the seemingly endless choice of possibilities we are faced with when beginning a new work.

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In this text, I aim to provide a critical account of a practice-based process where I composed the pieces: No Future, Futuribile No.2, celycib~, and radiocib~. In this iterative process, practical explorations provided foundations for theoretical development, which in turn, guided the following iteration of the practical work. In addition to this, I will critique the concept of the post-acousmatic, using the theoretical insights that emerged from the iterative process. In presenting the artistic results, I will describe the compositional intentions, the process, the aesthetical decisions I made, and a critical reflection on the results. The outcomes of my compositional journey might be regarded as heterogeneous in terms of musical results, and I strongly regard this occurrence in a positive manner. Despite the heterogeneity of the artistic outcomes, a conceptual framework emerges from the critical reflection on the works, linking them together. The conceptual basis of my work is related to two main aspects: one linked to my interest in political issues, the other to artistic and aesthetic matters. I see the artistic space as an opportunity to stage a potential socio-political scenario, in which different possibilities can be prototyped and explored, showing that a broader horizon of possibility can exists, even if in the confined boundaries of the stage. The artistic and aesthetic matters are related to my interest in acousmatic music. In this text I will show how I frequently make use of acousmatic techniques in a post-acousmatic context, which will be described in the Critical Reflection. The description and the critique of the works will highlight how such techniques contribute to this idea.In this text I will frequently make use of the term acousmatic. I am aware of the ambiguity of using this term, which in my understanding, might refer either to a phenomenon or a music genre (see The Post-Acousmatic section). However, I find it a useful tool to address a set of intentions and compositional strategies, aesthetics, and communities. My political and artistic stands relate to each other through my belief that an experimental approach to arts can contribute, to some extent, to the socio-political context. I regard the compositional approaches developed in relation to the acousmatic condition as the most interesting development in new music of the last century. Nevertheless, in the last decades, a standardized way of composing has emerged from the acousmatic communities. My belief is that this led to a speculation over self-referential aesthetics, and consequently, excluded new audiences to get access to it. On the other side, the absence of acousmatic music is noticeable in the programmes of venues, or the online listeners communities, and therefore, the everyday life of people. My belief is that an experimental approach towards arts, including acousmatic music, might be beneficial for contributing to a less hierarchical society: an experimental attitude in arts is the way to explore a broader horizon of possibility.

Detta kandidatarbete handlar om utforskningen inom alternativa ljudspelsformer. Vi ville utforska vilken ny kunskap som kan hämtas från spelljudsteori när den applicerades i ett ljudbaserat rörelsespel. Vi försöker uppnå detta genom en iterativ och experimentell designprocess. Vi skapade två olika ljudbaserade spelprototyper där vi applicerade olika spelljudsteorier. Genom att designa prototyper och analysera dem, genom induktivt resonemang och deltagande observation, kunde vi observera att spelaren kunde använda icke-visuella gränssnitt i ett ljudbaserat rörelsespel. Som resultat presenterar vi processens mest avgörande designproblem. Utmaningen med att utveckla icke-visuella gränssnitten var att instruera spelaren i att använda dem genom icke-vokala ljud. Vi presenterar även ett nytt sätt att förstå akusmatiska ljud i icke-visuella ljudbaserade spel. Som avslutande del så diskuteras undersökningens relevans och framtida undersökningsområden föreslås. / This bachelor thesis is about exploration within alternative forms of audio game. We wanted to explore what new knowledge could be extracted from game audio theory when it is applied to a movement based audio game. We aim to do this through an iterative and experimental design process. We created two different audio game prototypes where different game audio theories were applied. By designing prototypes and analyzing them, through inductive reasoning and participant observation, we could observe that players were able to use non-visual interfaces in an non-visual audio game. As our results we present the process’s most critical design problems. The challenge in creating these non-visual interfaces was instructing the player on how to use them through non-vocal audio. We also present a new way of understanding acousmatic sound in non-visual audio games. Lastly the study’s relevance is discussed and future research areas are suggested.

A dissertação é dividida em duas partes. A primeira consiste em um estudo sobre a noção de escuta acusmáticano cinema, levando em conta suas origens eletroacústicas e algumas de suas aplicações na ecologia acústica e na teoria cinematográfica. O enfoque privilegia as definições formuladas pelos teóricos, Pierre Schaeffer nos anos 50, Murray Schafer nos anos 70 e Michel Chion entre os anos 80 a 2000. A segunda parte da dissertação, mais fincada na análise fílmica, aborda alguns elementos da poética de Lucrecia Martel, dentre eles apontamos o uso do som para representação do tempo e de figurações do corpo. Designamos um conjunto de estados sensoriais e do pensamento como a fadiga, o cansaço, o esgotamento, o esquecimento e a inércia que ocupam um ponto importante em relação às análises dos filmes de Lucrecia Martel, apontadas por alguns críticos do cinema argentino. / The thesis is divided in two parts. The first one investigates the concept of acousmatic listening as applied to film practice, taking into account its eletroacoustic origins and some of its extensions to film theory and acoustic ecology. The approach privileges the definitions presented by theorists Pierre Schaeffer in the 1950s, Murray Schafer in the 70s and Michel Chion from the 80\'s to 2000. The second part, concentrated on film analysis, discusses some elements of Lucrecia Martel poetics, among which the use of sound is pointed out for representations of time and body figurations. A set of sensorial and thought states is designated, including fatigue, tiredness, exhaustion, forgetfulness and inertia, that play an important role regarding the analysis of Lucrecia Martel\'s films, as pointed out by some critics of the new Argentinean cinema.

Following López, I claim that although any sound can be music, not all sound is music. Soundscape composition begins when a soundscape prompts the composer to engage musically with it. How this engagement manifests is influenced by composers’ differing philosophical, practical and aesthetic positions. These are explained in Part I and provide the basis to my analysis of soundscape composition. Part II focuses on how my soundscape composition manifests (in ways prescriptive, spontaneous and retrospective), how it is explored both temporally and spatially and how the listening subject and the acoustic agent are inextricably linked. Within the developmental phases of context, field work and editing, my first compositional approach, through which my works can be identified, is defined in three ways: as hyper-real (in which particular acoustic elements are exaggerated, distorted or re-combined); as soundwalks (in which the microphone is moved through space) and as improvisational intervention (using musical instruments to acoustically illuminate the space being recorded). My second compositional approach presents the perception of sound as micro, macro and ambient. My third approach, which is at the heart of all my soundscape composition, uses the microphone as a musical instrument in its own right. In all approaches, serendipity and my own acoustic presence are embraced. Diffusion of my work is intended to engage the listener in creative contemplation of soundscapes, any other perceived agendas such as documentation being incidental.