Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: In soundscape composition, environmental sounds form a ‘language’ that highlights the voices of the environment for everyone’s contemplation. Ideally, they create an atmosphere and space of listening that allow us to grapple with and perceive more deeply the ecological imbalances, social inequalities, cultural gaps, and political issues in which we find ourselves. With the help of compositional examples, the author traces ways in which soundscape compositions can be a forum for ‘speaking back’ in protest, making oppositional voices heard while simultaneously exploring artistic-poetic expressions for a deeper listening engagement with the sonic complexity of environmental sounds and the meanings they carry within them. Furthermore, the author considers whether and how a soundscape composition can be a relationship-builder between environment and listener: can it be an agent for listening to the land, to the natural world, in ways that make urgent and necessary changes of human behaviour possible?
Source: twentieth-century music
Author: Hildegard Westerkamp
Institution: Simon Fraser University
Language: English
Topic: Sound Studies and Aurality
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
Funder: Simon Fraser University
OpenAlex ID: W7130434764