Perception and Musical Preferences in Wishart's Work
Elvira Brattico, Fiorella Sassanelli · Journal of New Music Research · 2000
This paper has its origin from the analysis of the works of Trevor Wishart, one of the most representative composers of the English electroacoustic tradition, who has been orienting his research to study the possibilities of electroacoustics applied to human voice. Quoting Schaeffer, in his book On Sonic Art (1996), Wishart defines electro-acoustic music as acousmatic, since sound sources are ignored. Acousmatic music could be uninteresting for a listener who is not able to recognize sounds and to give a meaning to them. Restricting his discussion to concrete sound materials, and above all to human language differently manipulated, Wishart gives his personal interpretation of the problem. His solution and how it is coherent with the last theories and findings of cognitive sciences are here examined.