ABSTRACT
The ‘blurring of the edges between music and environmental sounds is the most striking feature of twentieth century music’, observes R Murray Schafer in a 1973 pamphlet.1 This chapter, which will explore some of the contemporary ramifications of this remark, is occasioned by the proliferation of field recording activity in recent years – field recording is now commonly encountered both as a distinct artistic practice and as a component of experimental music and sound art.2 I will consider the aesthetic status of field recording itself and the extent to which recordings of environmental sound show signs of the structuring or artefactual characteristics of an artwork, whether musical or not. My concern is not the tendency of contemporary music, under the distinct pressures exerted by Russolo, Schaefer, Cage or Schafer himself, to incorporate non-musical sound into its own processes. Rather I will focus on phonography itself, discussing works that are certainly artworks and that share much ground with some forms of experimental music.
