‘Primacy of the Ear’ – But Whose Ear?: the case for auraldiversity in sonic arts practice and discourse

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Drever, John L.. 2019. ‘Primacy of the Ear’ – But Whose Ear?: the case for auraldiversity in sonic arts practice and discourse. Organised Sound, 24(1), pp. 85-95. ISSN 1355-7718 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

60 years on from Pierre Schaeffer’s call for ‘primacy of the ear’ [‘primauté de l’oreille’] (Schaeffer 1957) and Denis Smalley’s reassertion of ‘the primacy of aural perception’ (Smalley 1986) in music theory and composition, this paper asks an ostensibly simple question: whose ear / aural perception is being referred to when we talk of and compose under this guiding principle? Is there a tacit preselected audiometric norm or even a pair of golden ears, at its core? The paper will problematise the uncompromising modernist notion espoused by Babbitt of a ‘suitably equipped receptor’ (Babbitt 1958), and posit examples of well-known composers whose hearing markedly diverged from the otologically normal, an acoustics standard from which A-weighted decibels is predicated (ISO 226:2003). In conclusion the concept of auraldiverse hearing is proposed and creative strategies that eschew or problematise auraltypical archetypes in sonic arts practice and theory wherever they may lie are encouraged.

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Article

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https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771819000086