Listening to Music in the Digital Era

From Firenze University Press Journal: Aisthesis

Giacomo Fronzi

The relationship between new technologies and the dimension of listening takes at least two different directions, the first dealing with the role new technologies play in the “simple” reproduction and diffusion of music materials that cannot necessarily be categorized as technological music (for example, a Quartet by Brahms heard in Internet streaming); the second concerning the listening modes inescapably involved in the reception of a music product (whether belonging to the so-called “serious music” –i.e. classical music –or to pop music), which depend on the nature of the music itself (for example, an Acousmatic work or a live-performed techno piece). Starting from this basic distinction makes it possible to avoid any misunderstanding about the correct meaning to be attributed both to technology (instrumental function or production-realization function) and to listening (mediated or immediate). This distinction applies especially today, in an age in which listening to any kind of music is almost exclusively mediated by the electric and/or electronic element. Excluding only the case of listening to live-performed classical works (the performance of which does not envisage the use of microphones or amplifiers), many contemporary musical experiences are characterized by electric and/or electronic mediation. In most cases, music is produced and experienced through technological devices and equipment (Pinch-Bijsterveld [2003]).But this is not all.

The musical interactivity promoted by the web and by IT resources has completely revolutionized our everyday listening modes by combining, blending, and remixing the various genres of music and their place in history, thus «freezing the repertoire in a sort of eternal present» (Cossettini [2013]: 210). In particular, the combination of on-line resources and audio-processing software has placed the musical phenomenon on a new unprecedented horizon, within a new perspective. The domains of music production and reception have been re-invented, and rhizomatic musical practices, deprived of a single centre, have been projected into the global village just at that very moment, without a definite place and, potentially, without a future.

This situation persuades us to focus our attention on some elements that characterize both the production and the reception of music: (1) historical development of the relationship between technology and music; (2) technologically mediated non-live listening; (3) technologically mediated live listening; (4) ontological oscillation of a work of musical art resulting from its computerization/digitalization. These issues also bring aesthetics into play as to the relationship between new technologies and practices of production of and listening to music. In this developmental stage of the discipline, philosophical reflection on technological music can contribute to the formulation of «a theory that acknowledges the interconnectedness of aesthetics with culture and society» (Demers [2010]: 4).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13128/Aisthesis-18234

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