Understanding the Art of Sound Organization

Description

Leigh Landy teaches at Du Montfort University in Leicester, U.K. And Understanding the Art of Sound Organization is, in part, an academic's response to a perceived need for a language in which, by which, we can talk about electroacoustic music and sound art. A worthy goal, because talking--and, therefore, thinking, which, for most of us, takes place in and through words--about sound-based art is exceedingly difficult, to be sure. And this isn't Landy's first attempt to help what he hopes is a diverse and motivated audience, either. He is director of EARS, the Electroacoustic Resource Site (www.ears.dmu.ac.uk) that acts as updateable repository of sound terminology, whose aim is to collect, collate and disseminate words that can help composers, musicians, technologists and scholars talk, write and think about an unwieldy subject.
Weighing in at a modest 303 pages, including detailed informative footnotes and a superb list of references, the text is surprisingly concise given its ambitious goal: to create a theoretical framework for sound art, as well as to make sound-based music more accessible, to give listeners `something to hold onto'. To achieve that goal, Landy uses a musicological modus operandi and does so with as much clarity and rigor as his cumbersome topic allows. However, he does openly confess a yearning to embrace a more holistic interdisciplinary approach, something university faculties get fractious about.
Understanding begins with a discussion of just how accessible works of organized sound are. The presence of a perceptible dramatic arc and recognizable sound sources go a long way to giving listeners that `something to hold onto' Landy seeks to identify. In the provocative Intention/Reception study, data is collected from both informed and uninitiated listeners. They describe their perceptions of selected electroacoustic works that they listen to several times, prior to and after getting composers' accounts of their intentions for their pieces. Unsurprisingly, listeners' understanding and appreciation of organized sound pieces improves when meanings and aims are clearly explained and which are, to some recognizable extent, embodied in the works. Composers who adamantly refuse explication, who `let the piece speak for itself', according to the study's implications, are depriving themselves of a valuable communication resource and attenuating their potential audiences.
Next comes an examination of composers whose theoretical writing have played strategic roles in the evolution of the art of organized sound and its understanding. Pierre Schaeffer, François Bayle, Michel Chion and François Delalande are each discussed in considerable detail. And Canadians loom large in Landy's hierarchy of contributors to the growing appreciation of sound art: Barry Truax, for his much-respected work on soundscapes, aesthetics, and sound technology, R. Murray Schafer, for his activities regarding sound ecology, and Darren Copeland, for his `heroic' curatorial work involving sound art and ecology. And crucial to Landy's coverage of the topic is his examination of a seminal article, Dennis Smalley's Spectromorphology: Explaining Sound Shapes. This section is invaluable in its revealing insights, and could have been a book in itself. Finally, two sections, one on creating coherence in works and another on formulating a framework for the study of sound art, round out the condensed, compact study.
Landy's intention to make Understanding inclusive and inviting is admirable. However, the book winds up preaching to the scholarly choir and leaving many of the self-taught, intuitive sound artists with little of use to their own creative trajectories. The book's academic tone, insistent use of opaque neologisms and overemphasis of terminology and under emphasis of practice make the reading experience refractory to some of the very artists it seeks to reach. Where's a good editor when a well-meaning writer needs one? And a suggestion: the holistic interdisciplinary route Landy wanted to take: next time, take it. The book desperately needs a DVD with what information techs call VR, visual representation, images and graphics to `explain' what tortuous terminology cannot, and audio examples that allow the ear to experience what the mind seeks to understand through words. Regardless, if sound art is your métier, this is a must-read.