Metaphor, Abstraction and Temporality in Electroacoustic Music

This invited paper was written in response to Gerald Bennet’s ‘Listening to Electroacoustic Music presented at ArtMusFair 2010, Warsaw, Poland and was first given as part of a panel responding to Bennett’s paper exploring Electronic Music and the Challenges of the 21st Century. Other contributors to the panel were Katharine Norman and Jean-Claude Risset. Gerald Bennet’s presentation dealt with issues of metaphor, abstraction and temporality in electroacoustic music. I will consider each of these in turn.