2. Acousmate versus acousmatique

The poet Jérôme Peignot was the first person to use the word ‘acousmatique’ in describing musique concrète and deserves the credit for introducing the word to Pierre Schaeffer (Gayou Reference Gayou2007: 104). It is likely that Peignot discovered the word by reading Apollinaire, who wrote two youthful poems entitled ‘Acousmate’. Apollinaire's ideas would not have been foreign to Peignot who, in his own typoèmes, pursued typographical experimentation along the lines opened by Apollinaire's Calligrammes. Yet, Apollinaire's ‘Acousmate’ poems are quite immature works. They exhibit neither the daring typography of the Calligrammes nor the radical montage of the conversation poems. The ‘Acousmate’ poems, like much of Apollinaire's writing in the period before he came to Paris at the turn of the century, cultivate their subject matter from ‘the ruins of the past’ (Davies Reference Davies1964: 29). Such ruins often came in the form of words, and Apollinaire collected definitions of rare specimens, like ‘pandiculation’, ‘dendrophones’ and ‘Argyraspides’.

A definition for ‘acousmate’, copied from the Dictionnaire of the Académie française, is found in Apollinaire's notebooks:

Like the definition of ‘acousmatique’ that Schaeffer borrows from Larousse – ‘a sound that one hears without seeing what causes it’ – an ‘acousmate’ could be understood as describing an audible sound produced by invisible sources (Schaeffer Reference Schaeffer1966: 91). The potential invisibility of an ‘acousmate’ is amplified by the definition's modal characterisation – it is a sound that one imagines hearing. If the source is imagined, as in an auditory hallucination, one might simply assume its invisibility. But, by definition, an ‘acousmate’ is not necessarily invisible. One could plausibly imagine seeing the source of the sound alongside hearing it in the air.

Perhaps Peignot, upon finding the word ‘acousmate’ in Apollinaire, picked up his copy of Larousse and found, right next to it, the word ‘acousmatique’. Indeed, in Larousse's Grand Dictionnaire universel du 19e siècle (Reference Larousse1900) the words are found in successive entries:

If Peignot slid from ‘acousmate’ to ‘acousmatique’, Larousse encouraged it. In the Académie's definition, there is no mention of the visual status of the object imagined to be heard. Larousse, on the other hand, adds to ‘acousmate’ a clause concerning the invisible status of the cause of the sound, and thus effaces what might be a crucial sensory difference between an ‘acousmate’ and an acousmatic sound. Additionally, Larousse offers an etymology that makes it appears as if both forms of ‘acousmatique’ are derivations from ‘acousmate’. (Shortly, we will see why this is incorrect.)

Bayle – along with Michel Chion (Reference Chion1999: 15 note 5), Francis Dhomont (Reference Dhomont1996a and Reference Dhomont2001: 261) and Marc Battier (Reference Battier2007: 196) – tacitly accepts Larousse's identification of ‘acousmate’ and ‘acousmatique’. In his ‘histoire du mot’, Bayle introduces snippets from Apollinaire's ‘Acousmate’ poems with this clause – ‘Note in the Poèmes retrouvés of Guillaume Apollinaire, 1913, this ‘rediscovery’ [re-trouvaille]’ (Bayle Reference Bayle1993: 180) – the implication being that the real find in Apollinaire's collection is simply the discovery of the word ‘acousmate’, and thus the rediscovery of the ancient acousmatic tradition. Apollinaire becomes a crucial node in the transmission of this ancient horizon, by prolonging the term ‘acousmatique’ through its synonym ‘acousmate’. Thanks to Apollinaire, Peignot can pass the term onto Schaeffer. Yet, if ‘acousmate’ is not synonymous with ‘acousmatique’ then what exactly did Apollinaire re-discover? Why not focus the attention on Peignot? Isn't he the one that makes the more significant retrouvaille, by giving Schaeffer the word ‘acousmatique’ and initiating its mythic icon, the Pythagorean veil? If we are truly being presented with an historical account, then Apollinaire's role can be little more than accidental – at most, incidental.

3. Battier's argument

Marc Battier (Reference Battier2007) makes a case for keeping Apollinaire in the story. He argues that the central experience of phonography has less to do with the reproduction of sounds than the separation of sonic sources from their audible effects, which occurs at two levels: first, the source is separated from its effect and the latter is captured as a ‘physical inscription’; then separation of source and effect is evident at playback, where the listener is given the responsibility for ‘reconstituting the sound image which traces the sound of [the] origin’ (Battier Reference Battier2007: 196). It is in these two tendencies, inscription and reconstitution, that ‘one finds the sources of the creation of phonographic sound’. Battier does not conceive of phonography as initiating the separation of auditory sources from effects; rather, the experience of such separation predates the invention of recording. For Battier, the history of this kind of sonic experience is associated with the word ‘acousmate’. This is why Apollinaire is significant; the self-named ‘poète phonographiste’ of the 1910s gives voice, in his ‘Acousmate’ poems, to pre-phonographic experiences of ‘voices without bodies’ and ‘sounds without their causal source’ (Battier Reference Battier2007: 196).

Battier considers three moments in Apollinaire's career that can be understood as anticipations of Schaeffer's theories.

1. 1. In Le Roi-Lune, Apollinaire imagines the Moon-King sitting at a keyboard where, through the use of microphones, he transports the sounds of the world into his chamber. Running his hands over the keyboard, the king plays a ‘symphony, made by the world’ (quoted by Battier Reference Battier2007: 190). The phrase evokes Schaeffer's desideratum to make a ‘symphony of noises’ (Schaeffer Reference Schaeffer1952: 12).

2. 2. In December of 1913, Apollinaire made a trip to the Archives of the Voice, where he recorded himself reciting three poems. Upon listening, he experienced an uncanny effect: ‘After the recording, they played my poems back to me on the apparatus, and I did not recognize my voice in the slightest’ (quoted by Battier Reference Battier2007: 191) Battier describes Apollinaire's uncanny reaction as an experience of ‘blind listening’ (191).

3. 3. Battier cites a passage from André Salmon, Apollinaire's friend, which underscores the way that recorded sound makes ‘very profound and delicate [aural] perceptions’ of the voice available, perceptions that are stifled when heard in their usual context, emitted from the mouth of the speaker. Salmon writes, ‘Thus at the second hearing we heard ourselves … for the first time’ (Battier Reference Battier2007: 191). Battier intends the reader to understand this phrase as anticipating Schaeffer's claim that the acousmatic situation creates new conditions for listening – that we were often deceived about what we hear due to the context.

When the poet René Ghil went into the studio, Apollinaire experienced a similarly chilling and uncanny effect upon hearing Ghil's disembodied voice, describing it as ‘aerial music’ (Battier Reference Battier2007: 191). Battier emphasises this little phrase, for ‘aerial music’ links the pre-technological world of Apollinaire's early ‘Acousmate’ poems – where shepherds listen to angelic voices or a melancholic poet hears a quiet, absent voice – directly to modern phonography. Identifying the experience of an acousmate with that of phonography, Battier argues that both experiences inhabit a horizon defined by the separation of source and effect. He writes,

In the past, shepherds may have heard the angelic voice, but ‘this is the role now played by phonography, to make voice without bodies or sounds without their causal source heard’ (Battier Reference Battier2007: 196). Apollinaire's’ poetry prefigures a technological experience yet to come.

Battier develops the mystical connotations of the word ‘acousmate’ by citing a tantalising passage linking the term to St Cecilia, the patron saint of music. The passage appears in a volume from 1807, in which various definitions from the Académie's Dictionnaire are selected, critiqued and commented upon. Battier cites the following:

What could be more mystical – and more acousmatic – than the moment when St Cecilia hears the angelic choir while turning her eyes from the earthly musicians? By connecting St Cecilia to the term ‘acousmate’, Battier establishes a tradition of musical listening that is predicated on an essential trait, the separation of physical sources and audible effects. The separation inscribed in the experience of recorded sound is now extended back to its founding moment. St Cecilia functions as the icon of this tradition. Paralleling Schaeffer's use of an ‘originary experience’ to situate the loudspeaker in the horizon of the Pythagorean veil, Battier locates the ‘originary experience’ of acousmatic listening inside the ear of St Cecilia.Footnote ⁵

4. Acousmate and the Académie française

It would indeed be symbolically powerful for musique acousmatique if a tradition supported the notion that Cecilia heard an acousmate. But that is not quite what Battier argues; rather, he claims that Cecilia does not hear an acousmate but is in a state of acousmate. There is a subtle swerve in the meaning of ‘acousmate’ from an object – the sound of voices and instruments heard (or imagined to be heard) in the air – to a ‘mental condition’, a particularly auditory form of mystical experience. According to Battier, one can be in a ‘state of acousmate, or of enchantment’ (Battier Reference Battier2007: 196).

Battier's historical source comes from a volume entitled Remarques morales, philosophiques, et grammaticales, sur le dictionnaire de l'académie françoise, which he incorrectly attributes to Antoine-Augustin Renouard (Battier Reference Battier2007: 196). The author is not Renouard, but Gabriel Feydel, who published the work under the pseudonym P* P* P* on Renouard's press in 1807. The volume is organised alphabetically, and systematically reproduces entries from the Académie's Dictionnaire in order to contest particular definitions. Feydel challenges the Académie's definitions of two words dealing with mysterious mental afflictions, acousmate and incantation. I reproduce the passage in full:

In Feydel's first paragraph, he argues that acousmate and incantation are synonymous – they both refer to mental states that cannot be effectively distinguished. If Feydel can establish this point, then he can accuse the Académie of offering a definition of ‘acousmate’ that does not question its veracity as an intentional state while simultaneously offering a definition of ‘incantation’ that does. To illustrate the fallacy, Feydel selects an example from Molière's Le médecin malgre lui. Sganarelle, posing as a doctor, lacks the ability to give a fever to a peasant, because a fever is not the kind of thing that can be transferred by a cocked glance. But just because Sganarelle lacks such powers, one should not deny the existence of fevers altogether. In Feydel's analogy, Sganarelle occupies the same place as a magician; just because the Academy is sceptical of the power of a magician to invoke a state of incantation, does not mean that they should deny the existence of such states.

Feydel's publication evoked a bitingly witty response by André Morellet, philosophe and a member of the Académie:

As Morellet implies, Feydel is a bit feverish in his critique. First, the term acousmate is related to the Greek term noun acousma, ‘the thing heard’. It refers to a sound heard in the air, not the mental state of the listener hearing that sound. Feydel elides this difference, and assumes a synonymy that was never claimed by the Académie. And Morellet is correct; the peculiarity of Feydel's thinking is apparent when one looks at the historical usage of the term ‘acousmate’, for I have been able to locate no other passage which invokes being in a ‘state of acousmate’ other than Feydel's. The association of St Cecilia with the term ‘acousmate’ is idiosyncratic and unsupported by historical usage as well. In fact, an acousmate has little to do with music, St Cecilia or mystical unions; rather, it is much more closely associated with extraordinary visual spectacles like eclipses, meteor showers and aurorae. If it were not an oxymoron to say so, perhaps an acousmate could be defined as an ‘auditory phenomenon’.

5. Philosophy, physics and the coining of ‘acousmate’

The word ‘acousmate’ first appears in the pages of the Mercure de France, in December of 1730. It is coined in an article by M. Treüillot de Ptoncour, the Curé d'Ansacq, concerning an extraordinary, supernatural auditory event. Ansacq is a small village in a hilly, wooded region of France, about forty miles north of Paris. According to the Curé, on the evening on 27 and 28 January 1730, an ‘extraordinary noise like human voices’ was ‘heard in the air by several people in the parish of Ansacq’.

The majority of the article reproduces depositions undertaken by the Curé with the townsfolk, followed by a series of reflections.

From the villagers’ testimony, details about the mysterious sound emerge. Charles and François Descoulleurs, two middle-aged labourers, heard the sound while returning to Ansacq late at night from the neighbouring village of Senlis. While travelling along the north wall of the town, Charles reports being ‘suddenly interrupted by a terrible voice, at a distance of five paces’ (Treüillot 1730: 2812). Another voice resembling the first could be heard at the other end of the village. Then, a confusion of voices broke out in the space between – voices of elders, children, men and women, speaking in an unintelligible jargon, accompanied by the sound of instruments. While some voices appeared to come from quite high in the air, ‘about twenty or thirty feet’, others were emitted from about the height of an ordinary man or even from the ground. The whole event ended in ‘peals of delicate laughter, as if there had been three or four hundred people who began to laugh with all their force’ (2814). The volume was so loud that the brothers report struggling to converse over the din. On the opposite side of the village, Louis Duchemin, a glove seller, and Patrice Toüilly, a bricklayer, were travelling from Ansacq to Senlis, and reported hearing the same event as the Descoulleurs brothers. After stopping briefly to listen more closely, they hastily continued onward to Senlis, determined to keep their distance from the sound.

Villagers inside the town walls also reported hearing the noise. Sir Claude Descoulleurs, the retired guard of the town's gate, reported that the sounds were loud enough to wake him. By the time the aged Sir Claude dressed himself and headed out to his courtyard, the ‘aerial troupe’ was already quite distant. But when asked about the sound, Sir Claude offers one of the more colourful descriptions, comparing it to a ‘Fair’ or ‘demonstration’, where ‘two or three thousand persons form a kind of chaos or confusion of human voices, of women, of elders, of young people, and children’ (2818–19). Alexis Allou, a churchman in the town, reports being awoken by his wife, and heading downstairs to see about the noise. After opening the door, Allou heard ‘an innumerable multitude of people, some expressing cries of bitter words, others cries of joy’, all accompanied by the sounds of instruments. The sound travelled along the road towards the town church. Nicolas Portier, a labourer, reports a similar experience of being awoken by the noise, which was so loud that his dogs threw themselves at the door in terror. Other depositions from townsfolk report similar experiences of being rudely awoken, noting the movement of the sound along the road towards the church and a similar composition of voices and instruments.

In the series of reflections that flank the depositions, the Curé imagines that his noise might capture the attention of the populace and scientific community in the same way that the appearance of extraordinary astronomical events, known as Phénomènes, did a few years earlier. In 1726, the aurora borealis could be seen in a spectacular display all across Northern Europe. The aurorae were so remarkable that it caused a panic amongst some crowds in France, triggering the government to commission an investigation by Jean-Jacques Dortous de Mairan to discover the causes. Mairan's book (Reference Mairan1733) became the most widely known book on the subject of aurorae in the first half of the eighteenth century. While the popular imagination saw ominous signs in the aurorae, burgeoning natural scientists saw an opportunity to offer explanations and dispel folk anxieties. The Curé had phenomena of this variety in mind when publishing his account, encouraging the Mercure's readers to explain the extraordinary sound through the application of skilful reasoning. To that end, the Curé even attaches a ‘topographic description’ of Ansacq, to aid ‘those who believe themselves to be able to explain this by natural causes and to exercise their Physics and their Philosophy’ (Treüillot 1730: 2823).

In presenting so much material about the Acousmate d'Ansacq, the Curé was participating in a typical practice in early eighteenth-century natural science, where scientific data and accounts were widely shared (Fara Reference Fara1996: 247). Just as the circulation of eyewitness accounts of the aurorae aided Mairan's work in establishing a history of such phenomena, and thus afforded him the means to establish recurrent cycles which would facilitate prediction of the events, the Curé was making information known to those who might be interested in investigating parallel extraordinary sonic events. And, similarly, the Curé developed vocabulary to aid in the identification and specificity of such events. According to Patricia Fara, ‘Natural philosophers developed a new vocabulary for providing detailed accounts of aurorae, thus consolidating their claims to intellectual possession of a phenomenon governed by the laws of nature’ (1996: 244). The coining of the word ‘acousmate’ fulfils this function:

The word ‘akousmate’ is intended as an auditory parallel to the visual ‘phenomenon’. Etymologically, phenomenon is derived from the Greek verb phanein, which means to cause, to appear or to show. The word retains a visual basis and cannot be easily applied to auditory events. Since Eudoxus, there was an established tradition of using ‘phenomenon’ to refer to spectacular astronomical events. Moreover, the Curé's justification for his coinage clarifies one odd feature of the word. The ‘-ate’ ending is uncommon in French. But it is apparent that the Curé knows his Greek grammar, and is simply transcribing the plural Greek noun ‘akousmata’, the things heard, into French.

As an aside, ‘akousmata’ has a special meaning in the Pythagorean tradition. It refers to a set of maxims, coded utterances and allegories that are often attributed to Pythagoras, known as the ‘Golden Widsom’. It has been a standard practice since Aristotle to venture interpretations of the akousmata, and the practice played a central role in the appropriation of Pythagoreanism as a tool for cultural revision in neo-Platonist philosophy and early Christianity.Footnote ⁶ One might jump to the conclusion that there is a long lineage that links ‘acousmatique’ to ‘acousmate’ via the Pythagorean akousmata, which would justify Bayle's identification of the terms. However, this must be dismissed. The Curé coins the term solely based on his knowledge of Greek grammar; there is no evidence to suggest that he intends the word to possess any Pythagorean connotations. The Curé's akousmata, although perhaps mysterious or supernatural, are definitely not coded utterances or allegories. They encrypt no esoteric wisdom, participate in no ritual initiations, and conceal no Orphic mysteries. The only thing mysterious about them now concerns their physical causal basis.

6. The debates in the Mercure

For next fifteen months, the acousmate was hotly debated in the pages of the Mercure. The first response is from an anonymous Burgundian: ‘I believe willingly that there is no physical explanation to discover in all of this, and I think that, as Saint Paul assured, the air is full of demons’ (Mercure de France, February 1731: 336). The cause is supernatural and should be taken as proof of the hubris of natural scientists and savants: ‘Perhaps God permits the reality of the event at Ansacq to oblige philosophers to admit that aerial spirits exist’ (336). But the profession of faith is tempered by a more rational question: if this is indeed evidence of demons or aerial spirits, shouldn't there have been precedents before the events at Ansacq? The Burgundian encourages historians look into the matter, and relates a few personal anecdotes of past experience with similar sonic oddities.

In March 1731, another anonymous writer attributes the cause of the acousmate to a human source – a ventriloquist. The author argues that a good ventriloquist, poised inside the town wall, could have easily produced the confused noise of the Acousmate d'Ansacq. By travelling along the wall he could create the illusion of the sound moving across the town, in front of houses, and towards the church. The author of the next response, one Monsieur de la R., challenges the ventriloquial hypothesis on the grounds that no ventriloquist can produces the polyphonic effects heard by the townsfolk.

After debunking the ventriloquial hypothesis, M. de la R. offers his own explanation, based on the experience of his friend, Monsieur P***, a physicist. In the middle of the night in early October 1730, M. P*** claims to have been awoken by an acousmate similar to that at Ansacq, filled with the sound of voices and instruments. Following the sound to various locations, but never finding the source itself, M. P*** returned to the front steps of his house only to be struck by a new acousmate, which sounded like ‘many whistles of different tones’, first filling the air with sound then ‘dying out as it receded like a wave’ (1033). The transformation of voices into whistling tones gave the physicist a clue regarding the source of the sound – air masses. Moreover, the location of these sounds was in a wine-growing region in the southern France, topographically similar to the environs surrounding Ansacq. The source of the acousmate is attributed to natural causes, ‘billows [of air] striking in different ways [the landscape's] uneven surfaces, now flat, now convex and now concave’ (1034).

In line with the hypothesis about air billows, the rest of the explanations in the Mercure are natural scientific in character. The debate devolves into a discussion between two figures, M. Laloüat de Soulaines, an advocate to the French government, and M. Capperon, the former headmaster at Saint Maxent, who had a small reputation for work in natural science. Laloüat attributes the source of the sound to corpuscles of air which, when placed under various kinds of atmospheric conditions, burst and produce all variety of motion; upon striking the ear, the corpuscles can sound like any number of things – voices, instruments, laughter and so forth. Capperon claims the sounds are caused by the action of ‘cold fermentation’ occurring in the bowels of the earth; again, under extraordinary atmospheric and geological conditions, the motions caused by fermentation can strike the ear and sound like a variety of sources. Throughout the latter half of 1731 and early 1732, Laloüat and Capperon rebut each other, each trying to demonstrate how the other's theory is incapable of explaining away the mystery of the Acousmate d'Ansacq.Footnote ⁷

Needless to say, the mystery remains unsolved; no definitive cause is attributed to the acousmate and the public's interest faded. The term is not to be found in any of other issues of Mercure in the years immediately following, other than a humorous reference to the event in 1738 (Mercure de France, September 1738: 1986–7). I have been able to find only one other attempt to solve the mystery of the Acousmate d'Ansacq. On 18 November 1901, a paper was read by one M. Thiot before the Société Académique d'Archéologie, Sciences et Arts of Oise, the département where Ansacq is located. Thiot, revisiting the acousmate, attributes the source of the sound to a strong ‘polysyllabic echo’ caused by the high, flat façade on the town's château (Thiot 1901: 69–72).

7. The expansion of the semantic field

What happens to the word ‘acousmate’ after the controversy in the Mercure dies away? Its meaning develops along two vectors. The first vector preserves the original sense of the term – an extraordinary but literal object of hearing. The Abbé Prévost captures this sense in a dictionary of French words ‘whose meaning is unfamiliar’. In the edition from 1755, the Abbé enfolds the original sense of the word into his definition:

We see the second vector in the Dictionnaire of the Académie – that same volume which formed the centrepiece of the debate between Feydel and Morellet. Recall, the Académie defined as acousmate as: ‘Noise of human voices or instruments that one imagines hearing in the air’. Rather than define it as a real sound, ontologically akin to phenomena like the aurora borealis, the Académie demotes the acousmate to a hallucinated or imagined sound.

These two vectors of signification penetrate the various disciplinary contexts in which the word is found. In particular, three contexts of reception – scientific, psychological and literary – shape the signification of the word. In the scientific context, the original signification of the Curé is preserved. An acousmate is an extraordinary sonic event, which demands a causal explanation. In a long chapter from the Traité historique et critique de l'opinion concerning the production of sound and the motion of air, Gilbert Charles Le Gendre positions the Acousmate d'Ansacq in a long line of extraordinary auditory events, combing the pages of Pliny, Livy, Clement and various historians for instances. No longer a terrifying event, the acousmate becomes a case study in the extraordinary workings of nature (Le Gendre Reference Le Gendre1758: 290ff.).

In the psychological literature of the nineteenth century, ‘acousmate’ is used as a technical term to describe the object heard in an auditory hallucination. The Nouveau dictionnaire de médecine (Béclard et al. Reference Béclard1821) defines an acousmate as ‘a noise that one believes to hear in the air, and which is purely imagined. Uncommon.’ As a medical term, the word finds its way into English, appearing in 1881 as ‘an imaginary sound’ (Power and Sedgwick Reference Power and Sedgwick1881), and generates a series of ‘acousma-’ words, coined to describe various sorts of auditory hallucinations. For example, the 1881 volume contains acousma, ‘a species of depraved hearing in which sounds are imagined as if they were really heard’. A 1907 volume introduces a slew of new ‘acousma-’ words: Acousmatagnosis, the failure to recognise sounds due to mental disorder, mind-deafness; Acousmatamnesia, the failure of the memory to call up the images of sounds (Dorland Reference Dorland1907). These ‘acousma-’ words are all associated with the pathology of listening rather than the physiology of the ear or the physics of sound.

In the literary context, ‘acousmate’ takes on the signification of an uncanny, supernatural event – a creepy effect without a cause – that can invoke a feeling of terror or dread, or a state of awe. In 1805 the word appears in a frightening tale by Le Gorse entitled ‘Le sabbat des esprits’, with all the requisite mise-en-scène: an uninhabited castle, inexplicable events, ominous inscriptions, trembling limbs and trapdoors. In a scene inside the throne room, there is a sudden sound: ‘One could almost call it an acousmate, for the excellent actors in this magic symphony were skilfully veiled by the sumptuousness of ornamental decoration, that one might believe it came from the air’ (La Gorse Reference La Gorse1805: 339–340). This association of acousmates with uncanny or supernatural events is also preserved in studies of folklore and religion, which explored the mythological association of acousmates with witches’ sabbaths and the Dance of the Dead.Footnote ⁹