Deep listening through anticipation: on Pauline Oliveros’ Lear

The American composer, Pauline Oliveros is known for her ‘activist music’, inspired by the women’s liberation movement. Her work was inspired by kinetic awareness and bodywork - the active participation of the body in the act of listening to music.

When I listened to the piece Lear, from her Deep Listening album, my first thought was that it sounds majestic and meditative. When reading up on Oliveros, meditative was the word that came up very often, and it serves as the theme for earlier work, Sonic Meditations. Oliveros was interested in certain mediation techniques, and the different sounds created by different breathing patterns. Sonic Meditations was considered a “healing practice - a tuning of mind and body”.

In Lear, Oliveros’ meditativeness is not as calming as I expected it to be. Lear is a very sonically multi-layered work, and Oliveros uses certain minor keynotes to create an atmosphere of foreboding. Lear, in this sense, would make a very good score of a science-fiction or space opera film. To me, it sounded like a type of battle music - telling us to be prepared for something big.

Oliveros coined the term "Deep Listening" to describe a practice of radical attentiveness (as noted by Pitchfork). From my personal experience, sound pieces and music which are typically described as requiring the listener to pay attention to the sounds tend to be relaxing. This presents a challenge for the listener. I think Oliveros achieves this very well through her music. I was actively aware of the music from the beginning to the end. I think her way of doing this is through the minor keynotes and that atmosphere of anticipation, which keeps the listener in suspense.

Ultimately, I would say that Oliveros stands out amongst her peers. This is primarily because of her being able to create music that is ultimately rewarding for the listener, in spite of toeing the line between classical and avant-garde and requiring a certain amount of dedication and focus.