Sound Unseen - Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice - Grand Format

Sound Unseen : Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice explores the phenomenon of acousmatic sound. An unusual and neglected word, "acousmatic" was first introduced into modern parlance in the mid-1960s by avant garde composer of musique concrète Pierre Schaeffer to describe the experience of hearing a sound without seeing its cause. Working through, and often against, Schaeffer's ideas, Brian Kane presents a powerful argument for the central yet overlooked role of acousmatic sound in music aesthetics, sound studies, literature, philosophy and the history of the senses.
Investigating acousmatic sound from a number of methodological perspectives-historical, cultural, philosophical and musical-he provides a framework that makes sense of the many surprising and paradoxical ways that unseen sound has been understood. Sound Unseen pursues unseen sounds through a stunning array of cases-from Bayreuth to Kafka's "Burrow" Apollinaire to Zizek, music and metaphysics to architecture and automata, and from Pythagoras to the present to offer the definitive account of acousmatic sound in theory and practice.
Sound Unseen is an essential text for scholars of philosophy of music, electronic music, sound studies, and the history of the senses.