Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice (review)

Abstract

Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice. By Pauline Oliveros. New York: iUniverse, Inc., 2005. [128 p. ISBN 0595343651. $13.95.] Before you read beyond this first paragraph, take four or five minutes to do this simple exercise: stop and listen. What do you hear? What is the most distant sound you can hear? The closest? The most vivid and the most subtle? Can you relax and just take in the whole soundscape? How do you feel after doing this? Has anything changed? You will not be able to understand the power of Pauline Oliveros's important new book, unless you take time to experience and practice different ways of listening, for this book contains series of invitations to explore the world and ourselves through sound and silence. It is also an initiation in the practice Oliveros calls Deep One should enter this book with caution, because, if you are willing to explore experientially what it offers, it could well change your life. If one's hearing is healthy, seems as natural as breathing, since we are embedded in sonorous world, with sound waves washing over and through us constantly. Yet listening is very different from merely hearing. If you need proof of this assertion, just stop reading again and listen. (You may wonder who turned up the volume!) Directing attention toward auditory perception can transform an ordinary din into an aesthetic experience, as John Cage's 4'33'' invites us to do. Awakening to the transformative power of perception takes practice, and as we practice, our and the quality of our experience seems to deepen, and with it the quality of our lives. For Pauline Oliveros, has been her life-long practice, and her new book offers culmination of her experience and teaching in this realm. That Oliveros has been major figure in the field of experimental music as composer, performer, teacher, and writer hardly needs mention. She has to her credit an impressive catalogue of scores and recordings, as well as wealth of articles, most of which have been drawn together and published in two collections: Software for People: Collected Writings 1963-1980 (Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1984) and The Roots of the Moment (New York: Drogue Press, 1998). A defining moment in her life came in 1953 when she placed her new tape recorder on the window sill of her San Francisco apartment and recorded the sounds of the street outside. When she played back the tape, she realized she was hearing sounds she had not heard while taping, even though she thought she was Surprised at the discovery of what she had missed, she gave herself meditation: Listen to everything all the time and remind yourself when you are not listening. She has been doing this meditation as core practice now for over fifty years. It is fascinating to trace in her work over the years her journey of practicing being present to sound and silence. Oliveros's exploration around the year 1970 of group improvisational practice called Sonic Meditation proved major development in her career. Influenced by her study of Asian contemplative practices, including Buddhist meditation, she created strategies for improvisation that allowed musicians and those without musical training alike to explore modes of and responding in sound. The first collection of Sonic Meditations was published in 1971 as series of verbal descriptions of how to listen and create sound fabrics in groups. In these pieces everyone is participant and there are no separate spectators. Active participation helps develop individual awareness and sensitivity, as well as sense of group bonding and healing, where music is considered a welcome by-product. Sonic Meditations laid the foundation lor the practice of Listening. Oliveros coined the term Deep Listening in 1989 after making recording in remarkable acoustical space: an abandoned cistern at Washington State University with forty-five second reverberation time. …