Reflections on the poetics of time in electroacoustic music

The perception of music is conditioned by the listener's ability to remember and recognize the material he has been presented with and its transformations. The nature of aural perception is linear in that music unfolds gradually, this unfolding distorts the listener's perception of real time creating moments of stasis and change alternatively. The electroacoustic medium allows the exact reproduction of the sound-event and therefore of its unfolding. The manipulation of these factors and the virtual time to which this gives rise are the means of shaping the listener's memory and his perception of musical pace. Through the use of mimesis and quotation the composer may determine the flow of time in his work, while recording allows him to reproduce time itself as borne by the sound object.