Pauline Oliveiros - Lear

Lear, by Pauline Oliveiros, a composer and accordionist that stands for the creation of electronic and experimental music in post-war America, is a composition that is about 25 minutes long. I would consider this piece of music as deep, meditative and relaxing. It can be compared to a mental dream journey for me that helps you to calm down and relax your mind. 

Pauline Oliveiros created and almost fabricate the term “Deep Listening” and the piece Lear is part of this concept that underlines characteristics such as electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation. In my opinion, especially the aspects of ritual and meditation in the mix with the composition of electronic music can be found in Oliveiros’ Lear. 

I personally find Lear extremely calming and a piece of music that eases my mind. Before I started to listen to it, I had a slight headache and wondered if it would be a good idea to start listening and working on my listening response, however I tried, closed my eyes and took the 25 minutes to use Lear as a moment of calmness and relaxation, which worked tremendously and even made my headache disappear. After the music had finished, I felt deeply relaxed and as if the past 25 minutes had been a very good and worthy act of self-care for me. 

Pauline Oliveiros piece therefore seems to be perfect for me to listen to when I need calmness, I could also imagine listening to it to help me fall asleep and do think it could be great music to accompany deep and heavy study phases. However, due to the length, slowness and meditative characteristic of Lear I would not hear it for fun or entertainment purpose. 

What surprised me most about Oliveiros music and this specific piece is that without any prior knowledge and this university course I would have always  described electronic music as (too)  loud, fast and restless and would have argued that those are the reason why I am not a fan of this genre. However, Lear proved my assumptions of electronic music wrong by being the opposite of loud, fast and restless. Therefore, I realized that electronic music has a wide spectrum with a great variety of music pieces as well as composers and styles that can catch me as listener with diverse feelings and responses.