“All Sounds Are Created Equal”: Mediating Democracy in Acousmatic Education

Acousmatic music is a genre of experimental studio-based composition founded in the 1970s by disciples of French composer and radio engineer Pierre Schaeffer. Although it is sometimes defined in contrast with other electroacoustic genres as a music made primarily from samples of “natural” or “everyday” sound, strict acousmatic practice is articulated not in terms of sound material but in terms of listening style. Although the aesthetics and cultural politics of acousmatic music frequently involve questions of mediation, the ideal is not to achieve a more perfect reproduction of sounds in nature, but rather to discover the organic musical structures afforded by the nature of inner sonic experience. ...