Aesthetic in Temporal Forces and Electroacoustic Composition

This work draws on ideas of time and rhythm to embrace aesthetic issues in electroacoustic composition. Six original compositions exploring different forces of temporal organisation are produced and examined from the point of view of their temporal strategies and possible temporal meanings. The perceived characteristics of sound as recognisable and non-recognisable, as well as organisational forces such as linearity and non-linearity, derived from Kramer s (1988) theories of musical time are considered and discussed throughout. Durational proportions and ways in which we may apprehend musical discourse in retrospect (memory) are also of special relevance. A general mode of reception is employed in relation to the overall experience of non-pulse-based structures, and in relation specifically to the experience of environmental and everyday sounds. Other aesthetic issues emerge and are embraced in parallel, such as imaginary narrative, attributes of musical surrealism and the relationship between timbral structures and rhythmic forces.