The Materiality of Sound in Compositional Thinking

On the one hand sound is a material phenomenon that leaves physical traces and on the other hand it is a disembodied and ephemeral event. The materiality of sound is always already problematic and tension-filled. This project investigates how sound appears and is conceived of in different artistic practices of contemporary composers and sound artists. In the 20th and 21st- centuries, musical composition and sound art developed numerous divergent approaches to thinking sound-in-itself, i.e. to grasping the real materiality of sound. The encounter of sound and composition finds its expression in manifold conceptualizations such as mathematical descriptions of a physical phenomenon, electromagnetic and digital signals, musical notations, traces between notation and resonance, a phenomenological object, a spatial event, or the gestural palpation of a concrete physical body or musical instrument that exceeds conceptualization. The idea of compositionally conceived sound contains a constitutive inner tension. The centerpiece of this research project is the investigation of this productive contradiction between sound and its idea. Compositional thinking produces concepts that grasp the inner contradiction between the ideality and the materiality of sound. The project aims to articulate this form of thought. The investigation of the question of the compositional thinking of the intersection of the sensible-material and the intelligible proceeds along a series of key notions of contemporary music such as structure, body, space, signal, notation, process, voice, events and sound object. By drawing on contemporary philosophical materialist theories, the project seeks to work out how these notions open up perspectives on the possible materialities of sound, i.e. how the relation between sound and its idea is shaped by these notions. A central goal of the project is to scientifically account for the specific forms in which concept and material connect in compositional practice.

The project investigated sound as a material in musical composition. On the one hand sound is a material phenomenon that leaves physical traces and on the other hand it is a disembodied ephemeral event and a perceptual form. The project investigated, how sonic material and form are related in compositional processes. In doing so, the concept of emergence was employed in order to describe how different temporal, spatial and formal levels of musical practice and perception manifest themselves. Contingency, that is, the resisting unpredictability of the material, was described as a central feature of material morphogenetic processes. The materiality of sound is always already problematic and tension-filled. This project investigated how sound appears and is conceived of in different artistic practices of contemporary composers and sound artists. In the 20th and 21st-centuries, musical composition and sound art developed numerous divergent approaches to thinking sound-in itself, i.e. to grasping the real materiality of sound. The encounter of sound and composition finds its expression in manifold conceptualizations such as mathematical descriptions of a physical phenomenon, electromagnetic and digital signals, musical notations, traces between notation and resonance, a phenomenological object, a spatial event, or the gestural palpation of a concrete physical body or musical instrument that exceeds conceptualization. The idea of compositionally conceived sound contains a constitutive inner tension. The centerpiece of this research projectwas the investigation of this productive contradiction between sound and its idea. Compositional thinking produces concepts that grasp the inner contradiction between the ideality and the materiality of sound. The project aimed to articulate this form of thought. The investigation of the question of the compositional thinking of the intersection of the sensible-material and the intelligible proceeds along a series of key notions of contemporary music such as structure, body, space, signal, notation, process, voice, events and sound object. By drawing on contemporary philosophical materialist theories, the project sought to work out how these notions open up perspectives on the possible materialities of sound, i.e. how the relation between sound and its idea is shaped by these notions.