Gestalt laws and sound simultaneity in electroacoustic

music

Raúl Minsburg

Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero

Universidad Nacional de Lanús

Textura Texture

English

Oxford English Dictionary (1933)

Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1954)

Spanish

Diccionario Enciclopédico Quillet (1968)

Enciclopedia Espasa Calpe (1980)

Musical Teaching

Simultaneity

Harmony Counterpoint Orchestration

¿Textures?

Arnold Schoenberg

• “The accompaniment should not be a mere addition. It should be as functional as possible, and at best should act as a complement to the essentials of its subject.... Accompaniment becomes imperative if the harmony or rhythm is complicated”

¿Functional? ¿Complement? ¿Complicated?

Walter Piston

Seven kind of orchestral textures

- Orchestral unison

- Melody and accompaniment

- Secondary melody

- Part writing

- Contrapuntal texture

- Chords

- Complex texture (combination two or more from I to IV)

Leonard Meyer The way in which the mind groups concurrent

musical stimuli

• A single figure without any ground Monody • Several figures without any ground Poliphony • One (or more) figure accompanied by a ground Homophony • A superimposition of small similar motives Heterophony• Ground alone ¿?

Dennis Smalley

Textures in electroacoustic music

Internal behaviour patterning

1) Enviromental sounds

2) Magnification of internal texture

3) Visual observation of textures

Simultaneity in electroacoustics, acousmatic

(Sound based music - Landy) - Empirical/perceptual music.

- Voice, melodic line Sound object

- Difficult to predict the result of the meeting of two or more sounds.

Gestalt Theory

1923 “Laws of Organization in Perceptual Forms ”

“... we do not experience a number of individual things.... Instead, larger wholes separated from and related to one another are given in experience. These arrangements follow definite principles or laws ”

1910

- Max Wertheimer - Kurt Koffka - Wolfgang Kohler

Some of the laws- Perceptual constancy- Simplicity- Pregnancy (Good shape)- Common fate- Balance- Simmetry- Closure- Good Continuation- Proximity- Similarity- Figure - Ground

Basic situation of simultaneity

- Two voices, sounds, sounding together: a difference at least in one of the parameters of the sounds

Instrumental Music Bach Ligeti

Electroacoustic Music

1 2 Parmegiani

Similarity

Traditional Music = Pitch

- Fugue – String quartets

- Small intervals in melodic motion

- Virtual poliphony for one instrument.

We can extend it to other parameters of sound

Intensity - timbre - envelope – sound object

Two sounds in simultaneity which are not separated in the frequency range , but in another sound parameter Chowning

Simultaneous sounds with difference in timbre and/or frequency range

Rapp

If there is no difference ... they won´t be differentiated. Chowning

Proximity

We link sounds according to their nearness.

Even if they are very different, they make a perceptual unity

El otro espejo

Two kind of unities

1) Pair attack – sustain

Attack Sustain Parmegiani Beethoven

2) Cell:different sound objects that can not be separate by our ear.

Schaeffer examples

Albert Bregman

Auditory Stream

A perceptual unit that represents a single happening

It can incorporate more than one It´s perceptual, not sound (footsteps, birds) physical

Rapp

¿When does our perception get lost?

When we listen more that three voices in sound simultaneity, we perceive their global characteristics, we perceive a group, a structure, a web.

- Poliphonic music

- Contemporary music

- Ambience sounds

• Structure, configuration, Gestalt unity. When the listener cannot perceived single lines but a

whole = statistical audition.

• Textural passage - Mountain When the listener's attention is drawn to the overall

sonic image and the interplay of the component elements rather than on any one individual line

Classification of textures• Monody• Homophony• Polyphony• Heterophony

Vocal and instrumental music

?

Which is the real difference between heterophony and polyphony?

Does the homophony include all kinds of accompaniments?

Is there only one kind of monody?

In which measure does timbre can change the perception of a texture?

Can different accompaniments create different homophonys?

If so: which ones? How many? If it doesn´t: why?

Can these four textures include all combination of voices?

Is counterpoint the same in Machaut, Gesualdo, Schoenberg,

Strawinsky, Ligeti? And if it changes…polyphony also changes?

How much is “poly”? Three, ten, forty, one hundred?

Does “hetero” refers to the amount or to the kind of voices?

Can polyphony be different because of harmonic features?

And should we use the same name for it?

If “voice” means “melodic line”: what role has pitch in textures?

If we talk about rythmic polyphony can we talk about rythmic monody?

New terms?

New expressions?

a) Quantity

1- One

Monody

2 - Few

2 to 3 - 4

Homophony

Polyphony

Heterophony

3 - Many

More than 4

Structure

b)Functionality

• One

• Two

• Three

voice

voicesvoices

•Sound/s (different)

•Sound object/s (diff.)

•Auditory stream/s (diff.)

1- One 2 - Few 3 - Many

2 to 3 - 4 More than 4

Monody Homophony Structure

Polyphony

Heterophony

Simple Complex Single figure/s no ground Several figures no ground

Figure/s with ground Three (or more) figure with ground

Simple ground Composed ground

De Armas Dhomont

RudyParmegiani

RMBelloc

Why does some sounds form a structure?

Why do we link, perceptually, heterogeneous objects?

Context

We link sounds if they are grouped by the context.

-Ambience situation = a specific space

- Sound Simultaneity = Structure in contemporary music

Ambience situation

Extraction of the sound from it´s original context

Listening unnoticed sound qualities

Ambience Beetle

Transformation of each one of those sounds

Entre sueños

Gradual change of context

Modulation from a real ambience to an

artificial one

Confluence of textural and discoursive

features

Evocation Abstraction

Quotation

. Direct reference of a sound/music

. Indirect or allusive reference

. Pure musical meaning/functionality

Overlapping of several leyers

Slow transformation (or modulation) from one section to another

Prolongation - Anticipation

Subtle appearance of a sound or a group

Subtle appearance of a sound or a group

A tu memoria

Trigger Insert

Ambiences Together

Sustained notes Note and ambience And more...

All =

Increasing or decreasing layers according to discourse

1 2 3 4 2+4 5 6 Días después…

Cantos lejanos

Sound discourse – Perception of form

Contrasts or links between a groupe, a structure, and the next one.

- Soft changes = transitions, processes

- Sudden changes = discontinuities

Good continuation

Formal or discoursives features

- Directional Processes = decay or growth in intensity

It can be interrupted = surprise Días después…

It can conclude = expectation Voces del recuerdo

Problems to be resolved

• Ambiguity of some sounds, specially regarding the figure/ground relationship.

• Confluence of texture and discourse.

• Aplication of other Gestalt laws: ambiguity, common fate, simplicity, etc.

Possible derivations

- Perception of simultaneity

Musical textures: acousmatic, sound based music with intruments

Audiovisual Textures

- Perception of form: integration with other arts

(Temporal changes)