Den 43. udgave af Musica forløb over to hele uger (19. september til 5. oktober) iført Strasbourgs orangebrune efterårsfarver. Fredag aften i festivalens midterste weekend satte jeg mig i teateret Le Maillon og følte mig først alarmerende malplaceret. Jeg skulle høre en talk med kunstneren Joris Lacoste inden opførelsen af hans værk Nexus de l'adoration (2025), men Lacoste foldede sig ud på fransk i 45 minutter, og jeg sad med ører på stilke for at fange en sætning hist og her. Ikke engang et ord på tysk var der at klynge sig til. Men lige da jeg var ved at flygte ud ad døren, strømmede det ind med folk på Le Maillon. Det var en imponerende skare af både unge mennesker i store jeans og ældre folk i farvede briller og silketørklæder. Caféens skydedøre blev slået fra, og gæsterne købte vin og varm aftensmad, slog bordene sammen og grinede dæmpet sammen, mens kunstneren fortalte. Det viste sig at være alt andet end ekskluderende. 

Kazuhisa Uchihashi stod mellem rustne mejetærskere på Landbrugsmuseet, da han lod buen glide over pickuppen på sit hjemmelavede instrument. Ud væltede en lyd, der på én gang mindede om en grønthøster og et groovy, mekanisk uhyre. 

Under festivalens ti timer lange minimaraton for elektronisk musik blev maskinerne for alvor til medspillere: Richard Grimm og Patrik Herman forvandlede en 3D-printer til en stædig rytmemaskine, et brummende doom, der skiftevis lød som fremtidsteknologi og gammeldags tærskeværk. Jean-Philippe Gross modellerede i stedet lyden som et fysisk stof – lag på lag, indtil den eksploderede i salen som en sværm af nytårsraketter.

Den stærkeste oplevelse kom fra Augustė Vickunaitė, der gjorde lyden til et poetisk opgør med fortiden. Hun kastede sig over spolebåndoptagere, lod båndene sno sig frit, vred og flåede dem fra hinanden, indtil de blev både rytme og rå støj – en kropslig og sanselig konfrontation, hvor nostalgi og destruktion smeltede sammen.

Man skal være varsom, når folk siger, »nu bliver det rigtig dybt«. Musikalsk, faglig eller åndelig dybde skal erfares – ikke proklameres. På årets Langgaard Festival i Ribe blev der talt meget om dybde, store begreber og åndfulde retninger, men uden at vi faktisk kom i dybde med dybden. 

Over fire dage i september omdannes Ribes gamle bykerne hvert år til et stort festivalområde, hvor historiske bygninger, caféer og spisesteder, det lokale gymnasium, kirkegård og kirker alle lægger rum til enten koncerter, foredrag eller lounge-steder, hvor dagens musik diskuteres. Festivalen har udviklet sig gevaldigt de sidste år, og siden sin begyndelse i 2010 altid haft enten en komponist eller overordnet tema til at stå over for Rued Langgaards mangefacetteret og forunderlige musik. 

Under paraplyen »Dansk mysticisme« fik vi i år lidt af hvert – mesterværker såvel som nitter og fusentast-kunstnere, som følte sig væk i nogle mystiske eller dystre klange, der ikke stak dybere end fornemmelser.

Abstract

The migrations of baleen whales generally go little noticed, yet they have a profound effect on underwater sonic milieux. Seasonal fluctuations in the songs of the humpback, minke, and sei whales are underpinned by the near-constant subsonic bass pulse of the fin whale. As underwater acoustic monitoring is helping to reveal, migration routes and timings of these top predators are shifting in response to changing ocean temperatures. Such monitoring allows whales to be used as climate sentinels, facilitates conservation efforts, and also offers the prospect of building on public »whale listening« projects such as OrcaSound. Widening public access to underwater acoustic data would permit an active deep listening with the potential of generating a fuller engagement with marine environments, complementing the everyday awareness of birdsong that connects even urban citizens of industrial societies to the more-than-human world. Using underwater recordings from the North Atlantic supplied by the Marine Directorate of the Scottish Government I simulate the yearly pattern of cetacean song, aiming to show the listener that different species are readily distinguished and »good to listen with«: they attract and hold the attention, extending our sense of dwelling in a world always already experienced by other sentient beings.

Abstract

Why is it that in experimental improvised music (EIM) anything can happen but hardly ever does? And if what musicians play is not determined in advance, what holds performances of EIM together? We address these twin questions through a combination of verbal dialog, recordings of a live performance of the Splitter Orchester and the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, and comments on both. Drawing on theories of »participatory sense-making« in enactive philosophy, we show that while musical phenomena such as drones and grooves emerge from human interaction, they take on a life of their own as more-than-human agents. By enabling and constraining what »makes sense« in particular situations, these »emergent autonomous organizations« shape the (inter)action that gave rise to them, obtaining normative force. By the same token, however, they can also change according to musicians’ subsequent (inter)actions. EIM thus stages the emergence and transformation of norms in real time and illustrates how human action more broadly interacts with the more-than-human.

Abstract

Drawing from examples of recent sound works and research the audiopaper explores the idea of listening to biophonic and geophonic »voices« as a form of technologically aided sonic animism. Field recording is understood as a practice of listening seeking heightened awareness and environmental connectedness and sonic research as 'deep' listening into scientific audio collections and archival sound. The audio paper features examples from the author’s recent compositions, radiophonic works and installations, and reflects on perceived sonic animism through the sound material. The compositions are contextualised as works relating to climate change and ecological crises and encompassing broader narratives: Rediviva intermixta, a sound installation/radiophonic work for Oscillations, a collaboration between University of the Western Cape and Akademie der Künste Berlin, includes sounds of wind, water and ocean, plants and animals, wooden constructions and metal fences at places with historical and current political and  societal significance; Homeostasis, an audiovisual installation presented in two natural history museums asks questions about anthropocentric perspectives on bioacoustic voices. By acknowledging that the voices of animals communicating underwater, and therefore in a medium of sound strange to human ears, will always be alien to humans, the work – composed with scientific research recordings – aims to appreciate otherness in these voices. Future Forest, a currently ongoing project, in collaboration with ecoacoustic researchers from Freiburg University, relates to the ecosystem forest: the Black Forest and old-growth forest in Brandenburg. The paper describes how, in making the first recordings of wind, sounding through different tree species with contact mikes connected to the trunk of a tree, transported us into a state of »animistic listening«, even a spiritual form of insight and realisation (»everything is connected«). 

Abstract

This audio paper explores so-called »game-calling instruments« as vessels for mimetic practices and intersubjective experiences. Game-calling instruments have a millennia-old tradition in various cultures of luring animals closer to the respective hunter’s hideout spot and are considered to be the first instruments built by humans. 

Starting from an encounter with a hunter in the Thuringian Forest in the east of Germany, while listening into the forest’s decline due to monoculture plantings, climate crisis and bark beetle outbreak, the audio paper explores how to use these instruments and practices beyond tricking animals to tune into the resonances of animal voices, hushing leaves, whispering winds, and, inevitably, environmental collapse. 

Drawing from environmental semiotics and the onomatopoeic echoes of flowing rivers and rustling leaves, the audio paper urges a release from rigid human perspectives and explores the possibilities of attuning to the subtleties of more-than-human communication. It proposes mimesis and empathetic listening as tools to engage with our surroundings beyond extractivism and as an ambiguous practice that embraces failure to develop intersubjective experience and sonic fictions, while reconnecting with the rhythms and patterns of the more-than-human world.

Abstract

This audio paper examines listening practices, technologies and cultures within the scientific study of marine ecosystems. It mixes recordings of whale song and ocean sounds with the voices of its co-authors, marine mammal ecologist Dr Denise Risch and artist researcher Dr Mark Peter Wright. Moving across three phases of argumentation and reflection, the paper questions how underwater knowledge emerges  through tools such as hydrophones, spectrograms and Artificial Intelligence. It situates the ears, bodies and imaginations of researchers to ask what constitutes sonic data when listening to worlds beyond the human.

Abstract

Along and in the rivers of Lewisham in south-east London, we hear stories of mermaids, treasure chests, crocodiles and, dwelling in a dark corner of Deptford Creek, the Necker, some say a merperson or a serpent.

In this audio paper, we explore these ethereal and slippery stories through listening to the landscape, examining the role of sound in the ongoing process of producing places (Massey, 1994). We consider how sound conjures the imagined mermaids and other watery creatures and foregrounds the pluralities and possibilities of places (Voegelin, 2021). In a reciprocal feedback loop, sounds give rise to certain imaginings and, once imagined, these sounds confirm the existence of what we think or know we heard. 

The imaginings are intimately tied in with everyday forms of place-making along Lewisham’s rivers – picnicking, graffiti-writing, playing and birdwatching.

Abstract

How can we (re)learn to receive vibrational information from Earth, and would this be considered an act of listening? Framed as a conversation with Earth, this audio paper weaves spoken word with field recordings of intertidal zones from Southeast Australia using listening instruments (hydrophones, geophones, custom-built aeolian harps) that foreground sounds beyond our usual thresholds of perception. Funded by the Sydney Environment Institute, our research was the basis for Listening to Earth (2024), a spatial sound installation, and inspires our audio paper that explores how we listen to the more-than-human and what sonic stories Earth tells.

Drawing on methodologies in deep listening practices, sound ecologies and non-extractivist discourse, we explore ways sound enables a dialogic exchange with Earth as collaborator and co-author. That our ears and eyes perceive only a small fraction of an infinite spectrum of vibrational energy raises the prospect that our bodies are soaked in a constant din of inaudible vibrations that bypass our brains to act directly on our organs. This embodied approach to listening through vibration is at the heart of our research and guides our listening practice. Vibration itself is a form of earth story and our dialogue and compositional practice, an attempt to understand them. In dialogue with Earth, through extended deep listening and recorded documentation, this audio paper will weave our argument of sound’s capacity to reveal stored vibrational earth stories through our research findings and reflections.