Listening Back and Shaping Form

This paper discusses the use of recorded audio testimonies as agents of meaning through electroacoustic music. The paper departs from the notion that sound recording is a significant act in itself, and that a recorded voice is capable of projecting more about the speaker and their emotions than the words alone. In working creatively with oral history recordings a core question from the artist's perspective is proposed: what is the recording doing and what goes on inside me when I listen back? Four compositions by the author using a range of oral history types as testimonies on the experience of war are discussed: Ricordiamo Forlì, To the Red Sky, An Angel at Mons and Once He Was a Gunner. The paper reflects on the process of transforming war testimony into an aestheticised framework—the construction of an overarching form, the sensitivities and contextual understandings required, and the capacity to embed vocal sound within the virtual soundscapes of acousmatic composition. This version of the paper is expanded from a keynote presentation given for the Audio Testimonies Symposium, jointly hosted by Bournemouth University and the University of the Arts London, July 2-3 2020.