Electroacoustic music studies and the danger of loss

not hide the fact that pure electrical means were also very fruitful. In this article, I will raise issues linked to the study of electroacoustic music, some of which were discussed at the October 2003 meeting at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, organised by De Montfort University’s MTI group and Sorbonne’s MINT group under the auspices of IRCAM, which was the first such event in which international researchers met to discuss this topic. These scattered reflections will be anchored in the underlying question of the repertory as a body of musical works, some of them quite famous and others not so well known or even quite obscure but nevertheless important. To study works from the repertoire of electroacoustic music, it may be essential to go beyond the obvious stylistic categories which may otherwise cripple our understanding of the whole evolution of this music and of its multiple forms. One solution is to consider the repertory to encompass all approaches of art music, as long as the works use some sort of technology in their composition, production or space projection. Often, this music emerges from the desire of musicians and sound artists to explore areas beyond what is commonly accepted. It is when this desire meets audio technology that electroacoustic music appears. When studying this music, it is necessary to consider the evolution of artistic ideas, stylistic trends, technological development and the techniques which appear from using new production means. Electroacoustic music generally refers to a specific type of compositional approach in a well-defined historical period, starting after 1945. Other names for this technological music have been used, such as ‘electronic music’, ‘tape music’, ‘live electronic music’, ‘computer music’, ‘acousmatic music’, ‘audio art’, ‘sound art’, ‘interactive music’ and, in France, ‘musique mixte’, while some of these were later abandoned or had their meaning modified, such as ‘plastic music’, ‘musique concrète’ or ‘experimental music’. The name electroacoustic music stuck and, although awkward and unsatisfactory, is convenient to designate a music born of electric, electroacoustic and electronic technology, used alone or in connection with instruments or the voice. Encompassing more than a century, music created through the use of diverse artificial audio technologies faces loss: of written documents, of musical scores, of instruments, machines and devices, of functional electronic components, of techniques and of a sense of the necessity which drove musicians to use a particular technology in a given context. In turn, the loss of documents leads to misunderstanding or oblivion. Today’s electroacoustic music studies offer ways to remedy the danger of loss.