Abstract
Hildegard Westerkamp (b. 1946) is a German-Canadian electroacoustic composer, researcher, and educator, best known for her work in acoustic ecology and soundscape studies. She is recognised for her vast soundscape composition oeuvre, her contributions to the World Soundscape Project, and for shaping and popularising the theory and praxis of soundwalk. Westerkamp’s musical language is characterised by material derived from the real environment and a strong, ecological message. These traits are embodied in the composer’s 1992 piece Beneath the Forest Floor.
Based on an analysis of the composition, the paper shows how music can address environmental issues, through the incorporation of real-world natural and human-made sounds. Furthermore, it describes how the electroacoustic transformation of environmental sounds can address their deeper, symbolic, and mythological levels, thus uncovering their cultural and personal associations. The use of totemic sounds in Beneath the Forest Floor will also be discussed as a means of invoking (native) cultures’ close relationship with nature, thus introducing another social and cultural level to the piece. The paper argues that by incorporating these elements soundscape composition may reacquaint listeners and composers with the environment and their inner selves, renew their relationship with the natural world and prompt their engagement with climatic issues. Finally, a graphic analysis of Beneath the Forest Floor shall be presented, to suggest that multisensory experience may serve educational purposes postulated by the World Soundscape Project, and therefore complete the environmental, social, cultural, political, and educational aims and levels of soundscape composition.