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Following Edgard Varèse’s influential lectures – translated and documented in ‘The Liberation of Sound’ – electroacoustic music has spawned many different styles and genres. His argument was for composers to follow their imagination and not be bound to the constraints of musical notation. This, arguably, was one of the catalysts for the emergence of electroacoustic musical works. With past and recent technological advancement, the varieties of genres and styles within electroacoustic music have only expanded, challenging the notion of how one could analyse such works. It is therefore unsurprising that there is no general consensus on analytical methodologies. But for an art form that celebrates all musical possibilities should the analysis of such musics be constraint to a set number of formalised analytical methodologies?Rather than propose a new all-encompassing methodology, this article will argue for a universal approach to electroacoustic music analysis and the liberation of sound analysis. The concept of an analytical community (a community that accepts multiple analyses whilst encouraging practitioners to find new and innovative ways to analyse such works) will be raised as a means to address the issues facing electroacoustic music analysis, using the OREMA (Online Repository for Electroacoustic Music Analysis) project as an example of such an initiative.

This article concerns the temporal experience of acousmatic music, how the music can impact a listener’s sense of time passing and the implications of memory and expectations of auditory events and their perceived connections to one another. It will outline how memory and schemas lead to predictions in the immediate future and larger expectations of a work’s form. An overview of the temporal listening framework for acousmatic music will be provided to show the interrelationship between memory and expectations and how they influence one’s listening focus in the present. Trevor Wishart’s Imago will be used to illustrate how one might compose an acousmatic work to promote active listening using compositional techniques that engage personal schemas and those built through the course of experiencing the piece.

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