Heft 03 / Juli 2014

Zusammenfassung:

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Summary:

Pierre Schaeffer’s Theology of Listening – This essay is an attempt to explain the theory of listening developed by Pierre Schaeffer in his Treaty on Musical Objects (1966). Listening is broken up into four different forms and specified with the aid of concepts adapted from Paul Valéry and Edmund Husserl. But the concentrated écoute réduite, which aims to penetrate sound objects rather than analyzing musical structures, also takes place against a theological background. This is defined by the tradition of deism (decoding nature as the book of God), their scientistic theology of Teilhard de Chardin (who speaks of a »spiritual power of matter«), and a mystical stance that seeks to circumvent dogmas and images to arrive directly at a sound event, whose epiphany Schaeffer compares to receiving the host at communion. Schaeffer’s sonic thought thus transpires as an important stage on the way to an elevation of sound that strongly influences current musical thought.

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