Blog #5 - Acousmatic Thesis

Andy Hamilton argues against Scruton’s acousmatic thesis that musical experience involves awareness of sounds that divorces them from their sources, and argues that “attending to sounds as part of the world in which they are produced is an aesthetically relevant aspect of musical experience.” Since Hamilton holds that many such features, in addition to sounds themselves, can figure in auditory experience, he argues that auditorily experiencing music involves non-acousmatic experiences. Hamilton thus holds that there is a sense in which we can hear the production of sounds through hearing alone. Sources therefore must enter the contents of auditory experience on this view of musical experience. 

Hamilton also holds that the experience of music is not purely auditory. First, there are aesthetically relevant features of music that we experience through senses other than hearing —including sounds. “We feel as well as hear sounds”, and we see as well as hear the virtuosity of a performance. Such extra-auditory experiences must be non-acousmatic. Moreover, Hamilton doubts whether even acousmatic experience must be purely auditory. According to him, “Listening to sounds in a way that abstracts entirely from their sources, and from other senses, may prove impossible. Even ‘purely’ auditory experiences of sounds might have non-acousmatic features.”