Beyond reduced listening: understanding the phenomenology of Pierre Schaeffer

Abstract

Pierre Schaeffer has produced a large body of work that consists of both music and a wide-ranging theory for the aesthetics of Musique Concrète. In his Traité Des Objets Musicaux (1966), he lays out a philosophical framework for the genre, where he theorizes the notion of sound object as the primary element of the genre's aesthetical foundation and proposes various ways of describing and categorizing sound objects based on their sole perceptual qualities. His theorization of the sound object is prominently based on phenomenological thinking, which suggests the significance of phenomenology in his compositions as well. The primary objective of this thesis will be to understand Pierre Schaeffer's conception and implementation of phenomenology through the examination of his music, theory, and the relationship between them. Therefore, the inherent rela-tion between reduced listening and phenomenological reduction, and the significance of intentionality in this relationship; the notion of sound object with respect to the notion of object in phenomenology; and the primary role of composition in the transcendence of musical experience of Musique Concrète is discussed. This study intends to capture the role of phenomenology in the sole experience of Musique Concrète, which, hopefully, transcends a structural analysis of Schaeffer's music or a phenomenological analysis of Schaeffer's theory.