The aesthetics of computer music:a questionable concept reconsidered

BARRY TRUAX

Schools of Communication and Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6E-mail: truax@sfu.caURL: http://www.sfu.ca/~truax

1. INTRODUCTION

In some informal remarks I made at a conference in1979, I expressed a reluctance to deal with the subjectof aesthetics, which historically is a product of Europeanphilosophy and which remains a troublesome conceptfor contemporary music where an aesthetic term such as‘beauty’ seems to be studiously ignored (Truax 1980).In a recent, also informal article (Truax 1999) addressedas a ‘letter to a twenty-five-year old electroacoustic com-poser’, I predicted that the term ‘computer music’ wouldprobably disappear since in an age where the computeris involved in nearly all electroacoustic music produc-tion, this term, which once distinguished a type of musicfrom that made with analogue, electronic equipment,seemed today to be impossible to define rigorously.Therefore, the concept of the ‘aesthetics of computermusic’, proposed as a panel discussion topic, initiallyseemed to me to be doubly suspect as to its meaning.

If we agree to forego a definition of what we are talk-ing about and proceed to talk about it anyway – a formof social myopia that seems commonplace in many areasof life – I am prepared to offer the following hypothesis.I will argue that computer music, however it may bedefined today, has continued the Western, i.e. European,tradition of music as an abstract art form, i.e. an art formwhere the materials are designed and structured mainlythrough their internal relationships. In this model,sounds are related only to each other, what I have else-where termed ‘inner complexity’ (Truax 1994a).

Within this model (figure 1) we can identify a con-tinuum between instrumental and electroacousticapproaches to this abstract organisation of sounds. Atone end of the continuum, instrumental music practiceis characterised by a separation of sound and structure,i.e. timbre is treated as separate from pitch/time organis-ation (even though our ears tell us differently). At theother end of the continuum, electroacoustic music prac-tice tends to integrate sound and structure through itsemphasis on sound design as integral to musical struc-ture. The term ‘spectromorphology’ (Smalley 1986,1997) neatly points to ‘sound shapes’ as well as theirpatterns of organisation as the principal concern of atleast certain types of electroacoustic music, the ones thatare argued to be the most unique to the medium, rather

Organised Sound 5(3): 119–126 2000 Cambridge University Press. Printed in the United Kingdom.

than imitative of instrumental music. Moreover, assound design moves increasingly towards micro-levelcontrol, I have observed that sound and structure becomeincreasingly inseparable (Truax 1988, 1990, 1992a).

The addition of graphic images, live performers, orother media to computer music does not necessarilychange the abstract character of these approaches sincethese other elements can be treated similarly. However,we also need to acknowledge the fact that Westernmusic can never be entirely abstract and self-contained.It frequently imitates aspects of the real world, both insound and pattern; it can also imitate or refer to itself inthe style of ‘bricolage’; and perhaps most significantly,it suggests and plays on metaphors and symbolism, someintended by the composer, others provided by the lis-tener. Despite these dynamics of music as a form ofcommunication, it is still usually conceived and articu-lated as an abstract art form – beyond words – in ourcultural tradition.

Can we say that computer music somehow encouragesthis continuation of the Western tradition of abstraction?Probably the major factor that contributes to this direc-tion is that, despite the trend in user interface design tomake the process appear intuitive, computer music isultimately produced by an algorithm – a program. Thereis always a high degree of formalisation involved, just

Figure 1. Schematic model of inner and outer complexity.

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as all data is represented in binary form no matter whatits provenance or use. It can be argued that the digitalrepresentation of music is the most abstract and context-free form it has ever taken.

Therefore, we can ask whether the aesthetics of com-puter music is destined to be the human response toincreasingly controlled and precisely defined patterns ofsound?

If so, what is missing? My answer would be, theexternal world of complexity (figure 1). Traditionally,this has been referred to as ‘extra-musical’ concerns, aterm which, like the similar sounding term ‘extra-marital’, seems to imply dangerous territory, hence itsirresistibility! Music which exhibits a significant degreeof extra-musical association has been termed programmemusic, film music, functional music, and so on, withlittle doubt left as to its resulting status in the Westernclassical tradition.

In their study of various world cultures, some ethno-musicologists have attempted to analyse the music theyfind as ‘text’, looking for its abstract methods of pat-terning sound, often with the unstated conclusion thatwhat they observe is less developed than its Europeancounterparts. As a result, such approaches seem inevit-ably linked to colonialism and racism, despite their prac-titioners’ claims to the contrary.

Other ethnomusicologists argue – more convincingly,I find – that music in other cultures is not merely text,but is integrated with its context in ways that are just ascomplex, if not more so, than what is found in the West(Shepherd 1992). According to this view, in oral cul-tures, sound-making is deeply embedded in all aspectsof the culture, suggesting that, in contrast to the ‘less-developed’ conclusion of the text-based approach, thereis an equal degree of complexity among cultures.

What makes an oral culture appear to ‘progress’ arechanges in communication technology that allow sound-making – now called the more specialised term‘music’ – to be increasingly detached from its cultureand manipulated independently. First there was print andthe development of musical notation which gave rise topolyphony and counterpoint (i.e. independently con-trolled parts designed to mesh into a whole), then openedthe means to exploit the power of tonal and harmonicstructures as the basis of musical language. Followingprint came the electroacoustic era, and the twentieth cen-tury as the first where listeners experienced musicmainly through the audio media.

One of the important implications of the representa-tion of sound as an audio signal is that it places all formsof sound, whether speech, music or the soundscape, ona continuum where the traditional distinctions betweenthese forms of acoustic communication are blurred(figure 2). ‘Music as environment’ is one of thoseblurred distinctions. Reproduced sounds become para-doxical and undecidable; for instance, speech on a publicaddress system can be recognised as human in origin,

but the ‘speaker’ must also be treated as inanimate,appearing as a surrogate vocal organ, but otherwise lack-ing consciousness and the ability to respond.Moreover, electroacoustic sound may be reproduced

independent of its original space/time context andembedded into other spaces in increasingly complexways, this split between the original and reproducedbeing termed ‘schizophonia’ by R. Murray Schafer(1969, 1977). Accompanying this process of embeddingmay be the creation of various ‘levels of remove’whereby various ‘parentheses’ may be opened wheresounds from entirely different contexts may be inter-mingled within the schizophonic experience. Such his-torical references may be ‘read’ by the listener as such,but in another sense this process of multiple embeddingplaces all recorded sound in an ahistorical present. Lis-teners not only become adept at recognising historicalrecordings or period styles, but today we can also pro-cess sound (and images) as if they came from those con-texts in order to evoke similar connotations. Advertisingappears to be the driving force behind treating soundqualities as symbolic and creating increasingly complic-ated scenarios for listeners to decipher. After millenniaof relatively slow evolution of the listening process, thetwentieth century transformed that process profoundlyand produced the electroacoustic listener as a consumer(Truax 1984).The progression from orality to print to audio culmin-

ates today in the digital domain where all sound (andother forms of information) is reduced to data overwhich we have the utmost control, and where its distri-bution worldwide via the Internet makes it ubiquitous.Along the way, music and its forms of representationwere turned into a commodity that could be bought andsold, owned, rented and distributed, a means of creatingexchange value and wealth (Attali 1985). Today, fivemulti-national corporations control over eighty per centof the music and entertainment industry as part of a trendtowards concentrated ownership of global media(Herman and McChesney 1997). Surely this control oversound-making, both technically and economically, addsnew levels of abstraction to its role in our culture.

2. ALTERNATIVE PRACTICES

Are there alternative practices, and hence alternative aes-thetics, which are not based on these levels of abstrac-tion? Is it possible to link inner complexity with the typeof external complexity found in the real world? Can wefind the kind of balance between internal and externalcomplexity that creates a synergy, rather than a domin-ance and subservience, between them? If so, we may beable to heal to some degree the rift between music andcontext which has so characterised the past century. Indoing so we are asking whether there are limits toabstraction, at least in terms of the human ability toabsorb and understand. In asking this question in the

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Figure 2. Speech, music and soundscape as a continuum (top), embedded within schizophonic reproduction (middle), and subjectto various levels of remove in time and space (bottom).

manner of the environmentalist’s query as to whetherthere are limits to growth, we are giving an ecologicalspin to the question and envisioning a more ‘sustainable’relationship between artists and the public. Given thedominance of exploitative corporate culture over publicculture in our society (Truax 1996a), this ecologicalmetaphor may not be a coincidence.

The two directions which I have been exploring in mymusic that seem best to involve this relationship betweenthe internal and the external levels of complexity arewhat I call electroacoustic music theatre and the sound-scape composition. Each focuses on one end of thesound continuum which I referred to earlier (figure 2).Speech and the soundscape both anchor us in theexternal world, despite the reduction to an audio bitstream that technology creates with their physical mani-festation as sound. There is a fifty-year tradition ofinvolving speech and environmental sound in elec-troacoustic music (Chadabe 1997). Sampling technologyis so prevalent that one might argue that a large percent-age of the material that composers use today comes from

those sources. However, the way in which that materialis used usually abstracts it from its origins, frequentlymaking it unrecognisable, and treating it as ‘raw’ soundmaterial for further quasi-industrial processing. There-fore, what distinguishes the alternative directions I amreferring to is not simply the material being used, butrather the way in which the external complexity of thereal world that accompanies that material is integratedwithin the work.

My interest in electroacoustic music theatre grows outof a love for the spoken voice, which I have used assource material in pieces such as The Blind Man (1979)and Song of Songs (1992), as well as its extension, thesinging voice. As a graduate and then postgraduate stu-dent in the early 1970s, I created two such theatre works(which could also be called operas), The Little Prince,in one act, after the famous story of St Exupery, and afull-length work, Gilgamesh, on a libretto by WilliamMaranda. The musical accompaniment to the voices wasachieved entirely with stereo and four-channel tapes,respectively. However, the lack of professional interest

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in these works, combined with my own inexperience indealing with the opera world, led me to abandon thisdirection and devote myself to the more pragmatic formsof the tape solo and solo performer with tape. In the1990s, I returned to this interest and created a full-lengthelectroacoustic opera, Powers of Two (1995–9), scoredfor six singers, two dancers, video and 8-channel tape,as well as a solo theatre piece for male double bassistand tape called Androgyne, Mon Amour (1997), basedon poems by Tennessee Williams. This latter work hasa companion piece for female cellist and tape calledWings of Fire (1996), based on poetry by Joy Kirstin.

It is my belief that the addition of an electroacoustictape to live performance is not merely a matter of pro-viding a (less expensive) technological musical accom-paniment. The electroacoustic medium is inherently dra-matic, despite its slow acceptance within the world oftheatre and opera. All electroacoustic sound, unless per-formed live on some electronic instrument, is disembod-ied – it comes from a hidden virtual source. As such, itcreates an immediate link with the imagination, memory,fantasy, the world of archetypes and symbols, essentiallythe internal world of human consciousness (Smalley1992). Sounds can be transformed with the ease of pro-tean dream images and often with the same sense ofindescribability yet powerful impact. Sounds, even themost intimate vocal ones, can appear larger than lifethrough electroacoustic processing and sound diffusiontechniques. With multiple channel formats (Truax 1998),we can create surrogate environments and soundscapesof great immersive impact for the audience, which canchange with the same ease as an innovative lightingdesign. The effect can be a diffuse sound field sug-gesting a timeless, mythic state, or defined with pin-point accuracy to create a realistic sound field. Perhapsthe most impressive of all is the ability to smoothlyinterpolate between such contrasting experiences,bridging the gap between the internal and externalworld.

A clue to how electroacoustic sound is able to performsuch feats may be found in the mediation model ofacoustic communication (figure 3). Whereas the object-ive approach of the physical sciences understands soundas a series of energy and signal transfers from source toreceiver, the communicational model puts the emphasison how information is created and distributed, and howsound creates relationships between the listener and theenvironment. Information is exchanged, but sound alsomediates our relationships to the real world (Truax 1984,1992c). Once that relationship is well established, it isonly a small step for the sound to come to symbolisethat relationship. Electroacoustic sound processingwhich preserves the identity of the original but somehowexpands its qualities seems to take the reference to thesource sound and allow its deeper, possibly symbolicmeanings to emerge. Granular time stretching, forinstance, which extends the sound without changing its

pitch, allows the listener to hear the ‘inside’ of the soundin slow motion, as it were, thereby allowing it to workon the listener’s imagination (Truax 1990, 1994b). Sim-ilarly, resonators with controllable feedback work on thefrequency domain of the sound, bringing its frequencycontent to the foreground of one’s attention. These tech-niques, alone and in combination, are those which I havefound the most powerful to evoke the symbolic level ofsonic material.My approach, then, in creating a dramatic work is to

embody aspects of the relationships involved and theirsymbolism in the live performers and their actions. Forinstance, in both Androgyne, Mon Amour and Wings ofFire, the object of desire to whom the poetry isaddressed is ‘personified’ as the instrument which theperformer is playing (Truax 1998). The text itself isheard only on tape, but one can imagine it as emanatingfrom the performer. In each work, the resonators used(based on the Karplus–Strong synthesis method) model astring and are tuned to the open strings of the instrumentinvolved, or their octave equivalents. When stimulatedby excitations other than bowing (e.g. bowing on thebridge, col legno, jete, natural and artificial harmonics,pizzicato and snap pizz, etc.), the resonators at fairlyhigh feedback levels act exactly as do the strings them-selves when bowed. When these resonators process thepoetic text, the illusion is created that the voice is beingprocessed through the instrument, fusing the performerwith the instrument, the lover with the beloved. Withoutthis type of electroacoustic processing, the performer–instrument relationship would remain conventional andundramatic.Even when the relationships between performer,

instrument and tape work at a symbolic level, a narrativeelement needs to be added to make the work theatrical.Poetry itself seldom does this, at least in its shorterforms. The Williams’ poems, chosen from his collectionof the same title, have no narrative component, andinstead are linked by their lyrical tone and an implicitcelebration of gay love. One of the better-known poems,‘You and I’, consists of a pair of stanzas that I used asbook-ends to the work, the first opening with ‘Who areyou?’ and ending with ‘My lover’, and the second open-ing with ‘Who am I?’ and closing with ‘Your lover’.This direct address is portrayed by the performer beingrevealed at the start of the work astride his instrumentwhich is propped up on a chair, using two bows to caressthe body of the instrument. He is barefoot, with tousledhair and open shirt, and the audience is immediately castinto the position of a voyeur to a bedroom scene.

Figure 3. The communicational model of sound mediating therelationship between listener and environment.

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The rest of the work is based on five other poemswhich have been brought together to form a loose narrat-ive. The title poem, ‘Androgyne, Mon Amour,’ opens atnoon in Union Square in San Francisco, where the poet,amidst the sexually charged atmosphere of theassembled youths and junkies, encounters a young hust-ler whose price he finds ‘exorbitant for short lease’. Hisdesire, which he describes as ‘fox-teeth gnawing chest-bones through’, turns inward as if reminded of somedistant past when ‘carnally I was to you/many, manylives ago/requiems of fallen snow’. The performer, nowfully dressed, mirrors this action, starting with the jazzybeat of the noontime street music, a snap pizz on ‘foxteeth’, the forgotten modal requiem, and finally the lyr-ical descent into the distant memory. This poem is fol-lowed by ‘Winter Smoke’ which is a set of four coup-lets, each describing a specific gender and age, firstwomen (who ‘comfort you in winter’), then girls (‘musicto remember’), followed by men (‘made of rock andthunder’), and culminating with boys who are ‘fox-teethin your heart’. The performer mirrors each text with anappropriate playing style, culminating with the dramaticcontrast between lyrical desire and the snap pizz of the‘fox teeth’.

The next poem, ‘Liturgy of Roses’, is portrayed asthe consummation of the poet’s desire for the androgynefigure. The performer sits on the chair, cradling theinstrument in his arms, playing incessant harmonic glis-sandi over a collage of the text, then mirroring the poemwith ascending harmonics through all the strings. A dra-matic shift ensues with the poem ‘Wolf’s hour’, wherethe scene is 3 am, after ‘an hour’s sleep and a blondyouth who declined to stay with me’. The performer laysthe instrument down, removes his shirt and smokes acigarette while the tape creates a chilly atmosphere withincessant tritones, distant half-heard music, and astretched and gnarled version of the words ‘wolf’shour’. The poet, however, is consoled that in his ‘hands’curved remembrance there remains indelibly/theunclothed flesh of the youth who refused to stay longer’,at which point the performer returns to caress his instru-ment and return it to an upright position.

The last poem, before the return to the ‘You and I’text, is ‘The Ice-Blue Wind’, a hallucinatory poemsupposedly about a musician playing a single tune ona wintery rooftop until he achieves a ‘union with TheAbsolute’. The performer, still shirtless, dons a necktie,extends the spike of his instrument, and plays it whilestanding on the chair, moving like a mechanical marion-ette to the simplistic stanzas and banal melody on thetape (created from resonating a jete rhythm). The finalnotes of the music are mimed by the performer. Duringthe final scene, the performer returns to the instrumentin normal posture, playing the scattered images sug-gested by the text, the tape ending with the title of thepiece which finds the performer on the floor embracingthe instrument.

The intent of this synopsis of some of the main tech-niques of the work is to show how a performer, instru-ment, text and tape can intimately interact in layerswhere each reflects and augments the other. Althoughthe tape by itself conveys all of the text, narrative devel-opment and musical treatment, by itself it would havefar less impact than when the live performer enacts, bothphysically and musically, the relationships being por-trayed. The example also shows how the real-worldcomplexity of sexuality and desire – themes that havebeen hitherto almost completely avoided by computermusic – can be incorporated meaningfully into a work.

The larger-scale opera, Powers of Two, extends thistype of symbolic drama to a more complex scenariowhose four characters (a heterosexual couple, a gay maleand a lesbian) are confused by the contradictions of thevirtual world (e.g. video images and cell phones), andthwarted in their desires for love. Each goes on a spir-itual and psychological quest which ultimately allowsthem to achieve a union with their desired other, even ifby the last act they may no longer be a part of this world.The details of the work are too involved to summarisehere, but perhaps a few examples will show how ourtheme of the disembodied virtuality of electroacousticmusic and video can take on a dramatic form, rooted inthe complexities of the real world.

I have described the work elsewhere (Truax 1996c) asan attempt to create a ‘contemporary myth’ because, infact, myth is one of the oldest forms of communicationwhich embodies and dramatises symbolic relationshipswhich otherwise remain abstract. And because of theirsymbolic truth, such myths transcend their cultural ori-gins and potentially speak to us today. However, we livein an age where advertising and the mass media are themain traffickers in myth and symbolism, not artists whoinsist on their pursuit of abstraction, thereby leaving aresounding vacuum of meaninglessness for a publicstarved for a reflection of themselves which is notexploitative.

The earlier article presented in some detail the scen-ario for Act 2, in which the gay male character, TheArtist, a lyric tenor, seeks guidance from The Seer, acounter-tenor who cannot speak but can only sing andprovide ‘images’ in the form of historical musical quota-tions (the ‘l’homme armee,’ Monteverdi’s battle ofTancredi and Clorinda, Wagner’s Liebestod, and Strav-insky’s Oedipus Rex, plus video sequences relating tothese). The Artist always misunderstands the Seer’sutterances, distorts them to their opposite, but still cre-ates beauty in the form of lyrical poetry which he sings.Frustrated by his failure to reach the idealised maleimage he sees in the first video, The Artist denouncesthe Seer (who proceeds on his own course towardsblindness and insight), abandons his search for Rilke’s‘god-like youth’, and in searching within himself findsfulfilment. The audio tape resonates and stretches eachof the musical quotations (sung by the counter-tenor)

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into an immersive soundscape, including spoken ver-sions of the texts, over which the performers sing set-tings of a variety of lyrical poetry.

Act 3, subtitled ‘The Sybil’, switches the genders ofthe performers from two high-pitched male singers witha female dancer, to two lower-range female singers witha male dancer. The lesbian Journalist (as the counterpartto The Artist) enters, seeking a story from The Sybil, asymbolic character who embodies traditional wisdom.Modal vocalises representing the Sibyl are processed inthe same way the musical quotations were in Act 2,thereby forming the accompanying soundscape. Wherethe Sybil (as the ‘teller of visions’) extols the perfectionof the Golden Age of long ago, the Journalist extols themodern perfection of television, which portrays theimages of all one’s desires. Two of the video sequencesin this act portray this perfection by processing televi-sion adverts which feature female and male models.When the Journalist falls in love with these images, butis frustrated by their lack of attainability, the Sybil, whoneeds a successor or ‘daughter’, counsels The Journalistto renounce her materialism and become her successor.She agrees and undergoes a symbolic death and rebirth,accompanied by a musical quotation from Berg’s Lulu,where the Countess Geschwitz sings her own Liebestodto the dying Lulu.

In the final act, ‘Beyond’, The Artist and Journalistare united with the dancers who accompanied them inAct 1, but whom they could not see. The baritone fallsin love with the soprano’s live video image in Act 1, butis rejected by the soprano who loves him but wants theideal lover she calls Orpheus. He and the sopranoreappear in the final act, but are divided by a barrierwhich must be crossed by the man. The solution is thereversal of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, whereOrpheus must not look at her but listen instead to herguiding voice. Representing the visually oriented,rational aspects of society, the baritone must relinquishthat dependency before he can be united with his lover.These binary themes of the visual and auditory, maleand female, heterosexual and homosexual, the real andthe virtual, are threaded throughout the work, hence itstitle, and ultimately they suggest a message that theseforces must not operate in opposition to each other, butrather in cooperation for unity to be achieved.

This lengthy description of the scenario of the operais intended to show how the virtuality of contemporaryelectroacoustic and video technology can be used as sub-ject matter to be reflected back into the real world viatheatre and opera. By representing ‘the other’ and givingit a psychological and cultural form, whether through theimages of desire or the media, this work attempts a syn-ergy between the heavily processed source materials andaspects of the external world. The dramatic portrayal ofthese relationships in their psychological forms, such asdesire, conflict, grief and acceptance, provides the audi-ence with both a conceptual and an emotional experienceof the various levels of symbolism.

3. THE SOUNDSCAPE COMPOSITION

The term ‘soundscape composition’ refers to a kind ofelectroacoustic work, much of which was initiated bymembers of the World Soundscape Project (WSP) atSimon Fraser University. Environmental sound record-ings form both the source material and also inform thework at all of its structural levels in the sense that theoriginal context and associations of the material play asignificant role in its creation and reception. In otherwords, the soundscape composition is context embed-ded, and even though it may incorporate seeminglyabstract material from time to time, the piece never losessight of what it is ‘about’.In an earlier article (Truax 1996b), I have outlined the

details of the history of the WSP and the developmentof soundscape compositional approaches in that context.I also outlined some general principles which seem tobe followed by its practitioners, and which I would liketo comment on again here. The first is the recognisabilityof the source material. In the more documentaryapproaches, most of the material presented remains larg-ely intact and generally recognisable. There are obvi-ously limitations to this practice, one being that manysounds become ambiguous when listeners do not have avisual reference to the source, and another being thatthose listeners who lack personal experience of the par-ticular environment or subject matter may relate to itdifferently, or possibly not at all. Both of these pitfallssuggest that compositional technique and expertise arerequired to base a work on sound material that can sur-vive in an acousmatic (i.e. sound-only) presentation –sounds and soundscapes that create vivid imagery bythemselves. A typical hard lesson of one’s first attemptsat field recording is that the product seldom conveys theenvironment as well as first-hand experience of it. Thesound-effects person relies on simulations as being morepsychologically ‘real’ than actuality, and the soundscapecomposer relies on recording and sound design skills todo the same with real-world sounds. The cross-culturalproblem may be equally tricky, but as with literature andother locally inspired art forms, the creator always hopesto suggest something more universal inherent within thespecific material.The second principle is that the listener’s knowledge

of context, together with associations and connotations,play a vital role in the reception of the work. Of course,this is true of all artworks, but in the case of the sound-scape composition, it takes on a specific role, that ofproviding contextual meaning to the sounds heard.Although the composer may choose to have a ‘point ofview’ or ‘message’ through the specific choice, juxta-position and treatment of the material, to rely only onthose intentions leads towards propaganda. Most sound-scape compositions, I have observed, give the listener agenerous role in their interpretation.For instance, in my work Dominion (1991) for cham-

ber ensemble and tape, and the short tape solo Pacific

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Fanfare (1996), a technique was developed whereby theattack portion of an environmental signal, such as awhistle or bell, was not stretched (thereby facilitating itsrecognition), whereas the body of the sound wasstretched up to a hundred times or more. During thisextension, the listener can hear the spectral componentsof the sound, and thereby become a more analytical,acousmatic listener, but the context of the rest of thework also cues the listener to use this time to reflect onpersonal associations with the subject matter. In the caseof Dominion, the narrative context is the creation of thecountry, its being tied from east to west by the railway,the experience of each distinctive region and travelbetween them (Truax 1992b). In the year the work wascreated, considerable debate was occurring over a pro-posed constitutional accord (which failed) and athreatened sovereignty referendum in Quebec (whichlater also narrowly failed). In the future, the piece maystill elicit reverberations of those debates which areunlikely to disappear completely from the country’s pol-itics. Although the piece has yet to be performed abroad,it will be interesting to see how it ‘travels’ should thatoccur; even without the personal or political overtonesof the piece, will it present an aural image of the countrythat perhaps complements the better-known visual land-scapes that are so striking?

A third principle is that many or all aspects of theexternal context of the piece are allowed to shape itscreation at every level from the micro aspect of thesound material, to its organisation and overall structure.This is perhaps the most challenging concept for thecomposer. To read their programme notes, one wouldthink that every work has been ‘inspired’ by some real-world experience; composers cite everything from vaca-tion encounters, to everyday family sounds, to mediaevents, literature and philosophy as seminal to theirwork. However, most of the time, one can listen to thework satisfactorily with no hint of any of these sourcesof inspiration because, it seems, they are just that, relev-ant experiences which have acted as a catalyst for thecomposer, but the style and form of the piece can easilybe related to previous practice.

I sometimes describe the difference in approach asthat between the composer ‘using’ sounds to expresssome image or idea, and allowing the sounds to ‘use’you, in order to see what they evoke, where they ‘want’to go, and what form they need to take. The processtypically works from the inside out. A simple examplefor me was my work Basilica (1992) which arose fromthe experience of stretching a recording of the three-bellrhythmic pattern of the basilica of Notre Dame deQuebec (Truax 1994b, 1998). By expanding the bell res-onances in time, it seemed as if the listener wereentering a much larger space, such as the church itself.When those resonances also revealed vocal-like form-ants resembling a choir, the entire form of the piece wassuggested – a representation of entering a basilica and

approaching the altar where a choir is singing, then exit-ing. Since the architecture of the basilica is a crossinscribed within a rectangle, with the lower arm of thecross being the longest (corresponding to the nave of thechurch), the lengthy opening section of the work, whichexpands the original bells (both in time and pitch), wasestablished. To suggest the choir more explicitly, indi-vidual moments of the bell recording which had a strongvocal character were sequenced into a kind of chant-likerepetition for the middle section. What remained to bedecided was the ending – how does one leave the spir-itual high point of the experience and rejoin the every-day world? It would have been tempting to let the meta-phor decide, say by exiting into a cloister, or byretrograde back the way one came. However, in all suchcases, I prefer to return to the original materials for guid-ance. The original bells slow down as they losemomentum until one by one each bell stops, and thecity ambience once again dominates. Instead of usingthe original ending, I created my own where I artificiallyslowed down a unison ring and let the ‘secular’ trafficambience of the real world creep back in, until finallyone reached an acceptable cadence.

In the case of Basilica, the acoustic materials essen-tially generated the entire piece, both as sounds and asa metaphorical structure. In other cases it may be a site-specific or occasion-specific piece or installation, or elsesome unique subject matter (Truax 1994a). What all ofthese possible approaches will have in common is thatthe piece cannot be predicted a priori – instead, it willevolve as the context and materials guide it. It resemblesfunctional design where the designer must decidewhether to impose a design on an environment (andthere are many out-of-place examples of such artifacts)or integrate the design with the environment. There stillappears to be room for personal style and expression,but the work clearly is not merely that – in fact, in mostof my own cases, the result surprises me as something Icould never have imagined doing, but yet I did.

Finally, the idealism of the soundscape compositionreveals itself when it attempts to carry over its influenceinto daily life and the listener’s perceptions. Instead ofexploiting environmental sound material for its quasi-musical qualities – and leaving the environmentunchanged – the soundscape composition intends tochange listeners’ awareness of their environment (a goalof the original WSP group through their documentationof soundscapes). The composer may experience thechange first. After working with environmental soundsin a concentrated manner in the studio, a curious phe-nomenon occurs if you hear similar sounds outside thestudio – they appear to be a continuation of the piece!The audience’s reactions may be more muted, but a clearbridge exists between the concert or radio experienceand reality. It is difficult to imagine an abstract workhaving this kind of effect. Of course, something similarmay occur when one listens to the piece again. In my

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work Pendlerdrøm (1997) (The Commuter’s Dream),which deals with the experience of commuting, natural-istic sections alternate with dream-like sections createdwith transformations of sounds selected from the real-istic sections (Truax 1998). On a second hearing, onemay recognise the original source of the transformation,just as one might listen differently the next time one iscaught up in the habituation of the commuting experi-ence. Therefore, with contextually oriented work suchas the soundscape composition, it is not only a matter ofthe listener having, as Leigh Landy (1994) has termedit, ‘something to hold on to’, but that this point of entryinto the artistic experience will feed back into everydaylife.

4. CONCLUSION

I have endeavoured to trace the dominant trend of com-puter music and its aesthetic direction as constituting anextension of the Western art practice of giving priorityto the abstract organisation of its materials and forms. Ihave referred to this practice as constituting a concernonly for internal complexity which largely minimisesextra-musical references, perhaps because of the lack ofa meaningful way to integrate them within the art work,particularly given the history of music as a non-referential form of expression and the romantic notionof music expressing the ineffable. Even if the computerseems limitless in its ability to formalise and abstractsound data, it is not clear that an audience can followthis kind of complexity or that meaningful communica-tion will occur. The political spin to this concern iswhether public funding for such artistic practices whichspeak to so few is justifiable to anyone except artists.

In order to propose an alternative approach, I havepresented two directions which my own work has takenover the last decade or so, namely electroacoustic musictheatre and soundscape composition, both of which arehighly context-embedded approaches to music creation.Listening and experiencing such works, as opposed toreading about them here, will hopefully convince thereader that the internal complexity of the aural experi-ence is not lacking, even when external factors haveplayed such a vital role in the creation of the work. Ulti-mately, that balance and synergy between internal andexternal complexity must be maintained for the approachto succeed. And if it does work, then the humanresponse – which will have to replace what was previ-ously termed aesthetics – will be decidedly different.

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