Acousmatic sound

Acousmatic sound is sound one hears without seeing an originating cause. The word acousmatic, from the French acousmatique, is derived from the Greek word akousmatikoi (ἀκουσματικοί), a term used to refer to probationary pupils of the philosopher Pythagoras who, so that they might better concentrate on his teachings, were required to sit in absolute silence while listening to their teacher deliver his lecture from behind a veil or screen. The term acousmatique was first used by the French composer and pioneer of musique concrète Pierre Schaeffer. In acousmatic art one hears sound from behind a "veil" of loudspeakers, the source cause remaining unseen. More generally, any sound, whether natural or manipulated, may be described as acousmatic if the cause of the sound remains unseen. The term has also been used by the French writer and composer Michel Chion in reference to the use of off-screen sound in film. More recently, in the article Space-form and the acousmatic image (2007), composer and academic Prof. Denis Smalley has expanded on some of Schaeffers' acousmatic concepts. Since the 2000s, the term acousmatic has been used, notably in North America to refer to fixed media composition and pieces.

In 1955, Jérôme Peignot and Pierre Schaeffer were the first to use the term acousmatic to define the listening experience of musique concrète. In his 1966 publication Traité des objets musicaux Schaeffer defined the acousmatic as: Acousmatic, adjective: referring to a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it (Schaeffer 1966: 91). Schaeffer held that the acousmatic listening experience was one that reduced sounds to the field of hearing alone. The concept of reduction (epoché), as used in the Husserlian phenomenological tradition, underpinned Schaeffer's conceptualization of the acousmatic experience. In this sense, a subject moves their attention away from the physical object responsible for auditory perception and toward the content of this perception. The purpose of this activity is to become aware of what it is in the field of perception that can be thought of as a certainty. This reductive procedure redirects awareness to hearing alone. Schaeffer remarked that: Often surprised, often uncertain, we discover that much of what we thought we were hearing, was in reality only seen, and explained, by the context (Schaeffer 1966: 93).

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