Scaling Form

This paper examines the question of formal scale in acousmatic music, aiming to identify ways in which relationships between a composer’s materials shape or determine the duration of the final form. Successful short and long forms in music are traditionally regarded as encapsulating a sense of completeness with notions such as narrative, development, departure and return as informing principles—the nature of which may influence formal scale. Yet, as with many contemporary music practices, acousmatic music may not always be read in terms of such established teleological models. The digital tools we find at the heart of acousmatic music make it possible to fabricate large quantities of new sounds very quickly, with signal processing and synthesis routines capable of giving composers unanticipated sonic outputs, setting up challenges for sorting, sifting and valorising materials with a view to formal design. That given, in order to locate some formal mechanisms, attention is given to ways in which materials are initially shaped and presented in a work, using the metaphor of ‘formed and ‘forming’ spaces. Through analysis of selected acousmatic pieces the idea of the ‘design impression’ is used to show through how salient levels of musical form can be identified and that comparable readings of acousmatic forms can be made across different formal scales.