Sonic Meditation (1974)
Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) was an American composer and accordionist. She was considered a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music and was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the early 1960s, where she served as its director. She taught music at the University of California, San Diego and Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She developed the practice of “deep listening” as a byproduct of her meditative training with karate master Lester Ingber.
Deep Listening is an aesthetic form of listening to inspire both trained and untrained musicians to respond to the environmental conditions of solo and ensemble performance situations. It differs from hearing because it requires setting the mind to a receptive state, unlike passive involuntary hearing. Her work led to a new musical theory called “sonic awareness,” a practice of focused, nonjudgmental attention to all sound—internal, external, and imagined—to expand perception. She used the “point and circle” model, where attention (the point) focuses on specific sounds while awareness expands to include the entire sound environment (the circle). Oliveros used these theories for sonic activism, a form of social resistance and a way to foster empathy in a fragmented world through collaborative, non-hierarchical music-making.
Sonic Meditations (1974) is a collection of text-based scores designed to foster deep-listening, community, and mindfulness through sound. They are intended for group-work, aimed to create, imagine and remember sounds to foster connections and change consciousness. These sounds include breathing exercises, natural tone vocalizations, and environmental sound conditions (listening to the AC, heartbeats, etc.)
Tree/Peace, composed in 1984 and uses improvisatory techniques to evoke the life cycle of a tree. Originally the work was performed by a trio (violin, cello, and piano) and uses the tree as a metaphor. Sound “branches out” based on the performers’ shared interpretation of a tree—whether a specific specimen or an abstract model of growth. The work consists of seven movements, each at a different point in the life cycle.
Ear Rings (1995) was written for four performers of any instrument or voice. Every few minutes, different duets perform together through six “Rings.” When a new performer enters, there is an overlapping trio of about a minute. During the transition, one partner of the previous pair stops playing and the new player establishes the new pair’s musical material. Each pair “should” have a unique sound. Once all the pairs have played together, there is a final transition into new material for the entire quartet. The final quartet should balance with the length of the six pairs.
