Recurrence in Acousmatic Music: Creative and Analytical Possibilities
Ambrose Seddon · 2007
Notions of musical structuring can often be traced to the perception of recurrent phenomena within a work; in other words, recognising returning sound identities and their transformations, and drawing links between them. Sound material connections might be made through characteristics including common source associations, more subtle spectral attributes, or an evident process of progressive transformation. The recurrence approach assumes that temporal structure is memory dominated, and that the perception of sound material connections is expected. As such it is not applicable to all electroacoustic works. However, as a creative tool such an approach may bring compositional coherence through limited sound identities and the creation of structure through self-referral.