The common elements of music are regulated by the harmony, rhythm, and melody that are associated with the concepts that include meter, articulation, and tempo. The tone and the dynamics qualities such as texture and timbre are often referred to as “color” in a musical sound. The composition by Hildegard Westerkamp, known as “Gently Penetrating Beneath the Sounding Surfaces of Another Place” has percussion, melody, rhythm, and harmony. This is the main reason why it is considered as music. The composition also contains percussion entirely or noise as that of the music found in Einsturzende Neubauten.
Actually, noise represents a whole genre of music on its own; hence, this composition is music. In addition, this composition contains percussion sounds that create harmony and rhythm from various sounds playing. The texture, softness, and the dynamics of loudness in this composition emphasize the style of this particular composition. There are a lot of harmonies that are found in the percussion sounds and the cricket sounds in this composition. This composition is a type of electroacoustic music that uses polyphony and also invokes the listeners’ imagination, memories, and associations related to the soundscape.
The World Soundscape Project was founded in the late 1960s and early 1970s by a research group headed by a research and educational group that R. Murray founded at the University of Simon Fraser. The main aim of these projects was to draw attention to the sonic environment through the help of a course in noise pollution and the raucous features of Vancouver’s highly changing soundscape. The presence of recognizable environmental contacts and sounds characterizes the Soundscape composition. This composition records most of the sounds in the environment that are usually ignored by the community. Moreover, the design also contains a full range of digital and analog studio techniques that transform the environmental sounds. However, the whole composition has a heavy level of tone quality, whereas the sounds are complicated to recognize, which shows that the community usually forgets a soundscape of the environment.
The more profound tone quality in this composition as well as the electroacoustic percussion maintains a severe understanding of the environment. The piece changes its shape of the level regarding the psychological and environmental surroundings. The composition is a successful one since its style has a very deep rhythm ostinato. It is also successful as it changes to crescendo from decrescendo and also from crescendo to decrescendo with a very deep electrical sound.
The composition commences with a soft but heavy rhythm ostinato and also harmonizes with some sea waves in the soft tone as well as other percussions. The composition by Hildegard Westerkamp is very dynamic because it suddenly played loud and sudden changes in soft which built the illusion of distance difference and echo. By putting in other high-pitch sounds with a very high-speed tempo at 1:16, the genre changes in the composition. The style in the composition changes to a crescendo from a decrescendo which makes the composition sound more distressed. In addition, the melody in the composition changes to a mezzo forte and contains various crescendos throughout the piece.
According to the World Soundscape Project, the music listener should concede the soundscape as an “intimate reflection of the technological, social as well as natural conditions of its area” whereas “sound making and listening are at a subtle association with each other.” Henceforth, the high-pitch transition can be referred to as the natural environment which is intimately influenced by the public or even the humans. Because the composition gets louder and deeper after, it can be that the natural environment is gradually damaged by individuals. Furthermore, this composition sounds like it is imbalanced from the beginning to the second part. As a result, it might refer to the imbalance of the relationship between the human community as well as the sonic environment.
The composition by Hildegard Westerkamp is used interchangeably with polyphony. The various types of sounds recorded in this composition consist of natural ambiances such as chimes, bells, and foghorns. A meaningful, as well as a harmonious relationship among the lines, is entrenched. For instance, in minute 1:55, the bass ostinato halts and transforms into a different harmony and rhythm. The degree of individuality or independence seen within the lines that deal with the melody also appears in minute 1:55. Moreover, when the loud and clear cricket voice emerges, the original melody is led into a different horizontal line. In minute 2:03, the bass ostinato slowly gets louder as the sonority of the cricket voice starts to get softer.
In minute 2:23, an additional cricket voice is played to dissonances from consonances and also to dissonances from consonances in a horizontal line. That is moving the long-range relationships and individual melodic lines of music textures as well as designs. A light beeping that is heard in the background at the beginning of minute 2:21 also gets louder in minute 3:11 which is also referred to as a horizontal melodic line. The composers have made sure that they balance the composition between the horizontal and the vertical forces, that exist between the lines. Furthermore, Westerkamp applies the sound ecologic as well as the noise.
Based on the composition, the composers aim to create an environment full of different ecology and sonic sounds. Hildegard Westerkamp also puts a lot of other harmonizes and cricket sounds in the composition. In addition, the composition also applies the echo of a sonic sound and an electroacoustic sound. The piece states an overall and ubiquitous sound in the background of a person’s perception, and all other sounds in the soundscape are associated. The composition also combines the melody and the foreground sounds that encode specific information or messages. I got a sense of place in this composition as I was able to own some of my beautiful memories as I connected with the music. The perception of “another place” is a vivid sign of the zone of silence that enables the listener to hear more, even in a quiet place, and explore a lot more in an ambiance sound.
The percussive sounds that are found in the cricket voice are an acoustical object for human perception and also purposes for listeners to own memories, imaginations, and associations that are related to the soundscape. In addition, this composition has combined with a small self-contained piece of a sound, that aims at evoking personal responses that are based on the cultural and collective level of the association. The project plans to improve and balance the quality of the sonic environment. It also helps bring awareness of the responsibility of environmental sounds towards the soundscape.