Perception and musical preferences in Wishart's work

This paper has its origin from the analysis of the works of Trevor Wishart, one of the most representative composers of the English electroacoustic tr adition, who has been orienting his research to study the possibilities of electroacoustics applied to human voice. Quoting Schaeffer, ill his book On Sonic Art (1996), Wishart defines electr o-acoustic music as acousmatic, since sound sources are ignored. Acousmatic music could be uninteresting for a listener who is not able to recognize s ounds and to give a meaning to them. Restricting his discussion to concrete sound materials, and above ail to human language differently manipulated,W ishart gives his personal interpretation of the problem. His solution and h ow it is coherent with the last theories and findings of cognitive sciences are here examined.