Electroacoustic Symposium: Humour in Electroacoustic Compositions. An Acoustical Test

Abstract

As Plato inSymposium, we will attempt a complex treatment of electroacoustic music discourse. Electroacoustic music pieces will be “attacked” in a “transgressive” way by humour, blurring the contrast between philosophical and music discourse. The aim is to locate originality and transcendence within determinate generic compositional boundaries – to stock humorous techniques and material and incite subversion of stereotypes towards electroacoustic evolution and progress. Plato in Laws (Stewart, 1994, p. 36) said that “… serious things cannot be understood without their opposites”. Tracing and identifying humoristic techniques in the electroacoustic medium could offer the understanding of the complicated compositional mechanisms that take part in the creation of the electroacoustic music discourse and the communication model that most of the time is missing. In order to critically appraise electroacoustic humour it is crucial to evaluate the composers' humoristic intentions, as well as, the audience's intellectual status, in perceiving composers' humoristic music remarks. We attempted to test the humoristic effects of conventional composition techniques in electroacoustic music. Huron's (2004) classification on music techniques was used for that purpose. A morphological analysis of many electroacoustic compositions by different composers was made. We located all Huron's humorous music techniques in different electroacoustic compositions. We finally demonstrated an acoustical test, in which 212 subject-listeners were asked to listen to 27 different electroacoustic music excerpts and decide which music techniques were involved and the relative emotion response to the selected techniques. The results were statistically analysed and specific conclusions were reached.