Aural Liminalities in New Music

By Ed Cooper

The distinction between 'hearing' and 'listening' marks two modes of aural sense: one passive, the other actively attentive. Yet movement between them--deliberate or inadvertent--reveals liminal states that are neither fully hearing nor listening, a sense of the sonorous that exceeds the reach of these singular terms. Such thresholds have preoccupied late-twentieth- and twenty-first-century New Music composers and philosophers. This Element brings their work into dialogue to explore how these aural liminalities might be conceived. Central to the study is a close reading of the implicit liminalities in Jean-Luc Nancy's Listening (2007), which provides a framework for engaging works by G rard Grisey, Luigi Nono, Pauline Oliveros, Morton Feldman, Bryn Harrison, and the Wandelweiser collective. By examining listening philosophies alongside musical parameters, the book amalgamates the fringes of language and sense--it is through the resulting dissonances that aural liminalities might be articulated.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1009716271
• ISBN13: 9781009716277
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 75 Pages
• Weight: 0.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"