Pauline Oliveros

Pauline Oliveros was a composer of experimental and electronic music and a pioneer of these genres, throughout her career she developed new music theories and studied new ways in which to listen, coming up with such concepts as ‘deep listening’ and ‘sonic awareness’.

Her research into ‘deep listening’ and ‘sonic meditations’ are the theories which have captured my interest the most. The concept of deep listening posits that there is a large difference between hearing and listening; listening is something that must be actively done to absorb information, Oliveros states ‘the ear hears, the brain listens’. This theory first came to her when she, along with her band, descended into the Dan Harpole cistern to record; this space produced a unique sense of echo with a 45 second reverb. Playing within this space forced her to learn to listen in a new way so as to be able to play properly, she explains they had to consider the cistern acoustics as another member of the band and use the distinctive reverberation as another instrument. This entire experience made her ponder the way in which she listened and what lead her to the concept of deep listening, she explains that we know more about hearing than we do listening. Music schools teach ear training but the ear cannot be trained, and it is in fact the mind that is being trained, to listen in a new way. When we talk about ear training what we are actually talking about is the cultivation of a musical mind. She has however, encouraged everybody to employ deep listening in their lives, not just musicians, as according to Oliveros it can greatly improve our quality of life if we learn to actually listen to the world around us instead of simply hearing it.

As for the concept of ‘sonic meditations’, it is undeniably tied in with deep listening. Focusing on different meditation exercises that connect the participants to the sound of the world around them or sounds being produced by a group, the concept focuses on the idea that sound can be ‘sonically healing’ and meditation focusing on sound can lead to greater awareness and sensitivity. Some of these meditations entail things like transmitting a sound image telepathically to someone else in the group or striking rocks in tempo whilst shouting a pre meditated word.

Certain tenets of these concepts which fascinated me personally are myriad; in her writing on sonic meditations Oliveros mentions how every society admits the power of music and sound, and that attempts to control what is heard in a community are ubiquitous. This caught my interest especially pertaining to advertisement and as propaganda for the church; music and sound has been used for centuries to control the masses through influencing subconsciously how they view products or ideologies. This is not something I have ever really considered before, how the positive feeling certain pieces of music or sounds convey can be used to insidiously instil positive feelings toward products or ideas. The part of this I find most interesting is the use of music and sound to help spread religious ideology; music is such a pure expression of the human experience and sound itself so unassuming and beautiful, the fact that it has been used to prop up dangerous ideas that have resulted in the death of millions of people is at once atrocious and incredibly fascinating. Music has a way of moving people, there are not many who have listened to a piece of music or seen a live performance and not felt connected to it. This leads me to this question; how many people were moved by the music they heard or themselves sang in a church and felt they were in fact being moved by God? How many people’s belief in this character has been founded or propped up by the feeling that music has given them that they have somehow connected to a higher power? Using music and sound in such a way is an ingenious and manipulative idea, maybe more calculated than I have ever before thought. Using music in such a way is of course more easily seen and more prevalent in advertisement in the modern world, a way of getting people to buy into capitalistic ideologies; in a way this has become a new form of religion.

All of this is very interesting to me and connects to Oliveros’ ideas about how there has always been attempts to control people through what they hear and that if we paid more attention and listened closely to what we hear we may be moved in a positive way and be capable of expanding our awareness.

The difference between hearing and listening, Pauline Oliveros TED Talk, 2015

Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice by Pauline Oliveros, 2005

Sonic Meditations by Pauline Oliveros, 1974