The Shock of Risk

Abstract

This paper contends that risk is an important element in our appreciation and understanding of art works and examines the idea and perception of risk within acousmatic music. The chief value of artistic risk is arguably its role in connecting the experience of art with lived experience. Risk, when recognised, has the capacity to become a wider metaphor for confrontation with the uncertain, the threatening, or that which is desirable, but whose attainment carries danger in the form of significant potential for failure and/or harm. In an artistic sense, the aestheticisation of risk is problematic if we aim to convey risk purely through sonic rather than through or in conjunction with physically enacted means. This is the situation with acousmatic music and examples of how we might interpret risk from the acousmatic repertoire are proposed. This is supported with the assertion that, as in much of the classical and romantic repertoire of Western music, aestheticised risk can be powerfully projected in the interaction of musical rhetoric and syntax.