After Silence: Improvised Music, Listening and Environmental Sound

This research concerns the practice of Improvised Music. It was originally prompted by a musical episode that took place in 2007 whilst I was involved in a dance and music festival, organised in Turkey by French choreographer, Yanaël Plumet. During that time in Istanbul, I participated with other musicians in a workshop about Improvised Music called ‘sound exploration’, led by the musician, Pascal Battus. By finding new playing techniques and preparing our musical instruments in different ways, we tried to remove our musical habits to discover new sonic materials. However, what I remember most is not the new sounds that we found, but rather a particular moment during an improvisation where we all stopped playing our instruments for a long period while carrying on listening as if the music had still continued. In silence, the unrelated sounds from the birds, an object falling onto the floor, the call for prayer from a minaret, my breathing, and ships’ horns from the Bosphorus suddenly came to the forefront.

To understand this experience — focusing particularly on the relationship between silence, listening, environmental sound, and Improvised Music — I have devised a method inspired by structuralism which consists of scrutinising my work over a ten-year period where I enquire about early practitioners interested in creative practices of listening and Improvised Music, and finally, create experiments to test out new practice. Through interviews, listening to other practitioners’ work, and observing and reflecting on my own practice, this research makes a contribution by acknowledging possible patterns, ideologies, or structures at work within my practice and within my field.

The research shows first that focusing on listening from a critical perspective (‘what if the ears I have and carry everywhere with me were older than I am?’ (Szendy 2008, 26 ) situates the layers of knowledge embedded in the practice that might define (or at least influence) certain choices when improvising. The research relativises the importance of ‘new sounds’ that, rather than overcome old ones, depend on them through archival devices and examines how awareness towards environmental sound in my practice was informed by different sources related to Improvised Music, but also to acoustic ecology, 4 musique concrète, and ‘deep listening’. Finally, this research suggests that if listening is the result of a combination of ‘ears’ — and the more this structure or composition will remain inclusive, flexible and unsettled as an improvisation — the more it will be possible to broaden the scope of listening awareness.