Music as “Impossible Experience”: Multisensory Perception in the Composer’s Practice of the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reflect the perceptual spectrum of new music media. At the center of the research is the so-called “experience of the impossible”. The recipient has to overcome all sorts of stereotypes of perception and reach threshold qualities within the individual, surpassing the standard inertia for listening. It is necessary to go beyond the usual, learn to perceive noise and surrounding sounds as musical material. Modern nostalgia for the living, elusive and infinitely changeable, conditioned by the development of digital technologies, becomes the basis for presenting music as an experience of the “impossible”. “Experience of the impossible” is an experience not limited by the external sides of being, which is defined in postmodern philosophy by the concept of transgression. The researcher bases her conclusions on the theoretical works of composers, in which they explain their approach to listening perception. In the work of Peter Ablinger, he is primarily interested in the maximum informative saturation: the so-called “white” all-frequency noise. The creative strategy of epiphany—the so-called “waiting horizon” in the concept of Salvatore Sciarrino becomes a reflection of the theoretical concept of David Huron and his idea of Sweet Anticipation.