In his Traité des objects musicaux, Pierre Schaeffer proposed a phenomenological approach which can be considered authentic not because of his eventual philosophical claims but because it led to the articulation of the “audible domain” – simply the domain of all what can be heard – by providing and binding together a theory of sound objects and a theory of listening practices. For what concerns the latter, in the famous Tableau des fonctions de l’écoute, listening is notoriously redefined in terms of four different modalities: écouter, ouïr, entendre, comprendre. For Schaeffer, a similar organization, which replaced the monolithism of listening with a multiplicity of determinations, was not an end in itself, but the first step towards a syntax of listening strategies. These strategies have been widely described by Schaeffer, but they have not received a specific formalization. On the contrary, a more explicit and formalized approach can result in a better description of the complexities of listening practices involved in electroacoustic music (and not only). In order to pursue such an aim, Schaeffer’s table can be rewritten in form of a graph, made of vertices connected by edges: the vertices represent the four modes of listening while the edges – connecting each couple of vertices – define possible sequencing relations between them. Thus, each path on the graph represents a sequence of listening modes. But Schaeffer has also described the dynamic transformations of listening practices. In particular, a key point in Schaeffer’s argumentation is his discussion regarding the process of transforming a practice into another one, a process which typically happens in the modus audiendi of the specialiste. While a sectorial drawing cannot show this process, a graph-based model allows to represent this mechanism by expanding and modifying the original graph. Analogously, other relations between listening activities can be discussed and modeled through graphs.
Tableaux et Gravures: a Graph Model for Schaeffer’s Theory of Listening
VALLE, ANDREA
2008-01-01
Abstract
In his Traité des objects musicaux, Pierre Schaeffer proposed a phenomenological approach which can be considered authentic not because of his eventual philosophical claims but because it led to the articulation of the “audible domain” – simply the domain of all what can be heard – by providing and binding together a theory of sound objects and a theory of listening practices. For what concerns the latter, in the famous Tableau des fonctions de l’écoute, listening is notoriously redefined in terms of four different modalities: écouter, ouïr, entendre, comprendre. For Schaeffer, a similar organization, which replaced the monolithism of listening with a multiplicity of determinations, was not an end in itself, but the first step towards a syntax of listening strategies. These strategies have been widely described by Schaeffer, but they have not received a specific formalization. On the contrary, a more explicit and formalized approach can result in a better description of the complexities of listening practices involved in electroacoustic music (and not only). In order to pursue such an aim, Schaeffer’s table can be rewritten in form of a graph, made of vertices connected by edges: the vertices represent the four modes of listening while the edges – connecting each couple of vertices – define possible sequencing relations between them. Thus, each path on the graph represents a sequence of listening modes. But Schaeffer has also described the dynamic transformations of listening practices. In particular, a key point in Schaeffer’s argumentation is his discussion regarding the process of transforming a practice into another one, a process which typically happens in the modus audiendi of the specialiste. While a sectorial drawing cannot show this process, a graph-based model allows to represent this mechanism by expanding and modifying the original graph. Analogously, other relations between listening activities can be discussed and modeled through graphs.
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