This article is part interview, part research report. The author, Nicolas Marty writes in the abstract:

Trevor Wishart is an electroacoustic composer who obtained his PhD at the University of York in 1973 . books On Sonic Art (1984 and 1996) and Audible Design (1994), which present his ideas about sound treatment, perception and composition. All of the theories and ideas I talk about here are related to my research as a graduate student in music and musicology, entitled Sound identification, listening strategy and narrativity in Trevor Wishart’s Journey into Space – Agentization, objectization and narrativizations (translated from the French: Identification sonore, stratégie d’écoute et narrativité dans Journey into Space de Trevor Wishart – Agentisation, objétisation et narrativisations). The present essay is mainly the transcription of an interview with Wishart himself, in which we talked about Journey into Space, sound identification (“landscape”), voice (both recorded and improvised), symbolism and narrativity. I will add some comments and ideas throughout the essay; these will deal with music and meaning, the main subject of JMM, as well as with my own research on electroacoustic narrativity.

Born in 1990 into a family without musicians, the author, Nicolas Marty, discovered music at the age of 15, learning guitar and piano from Jean-Pierre Malardel in Périgueux, France. From 2007 to 2010, he participated in Jean-Yves Bosseur’s instrumental composition workshops and Patrick Mellé’s Computer-Assisted Composition workshops at the Jacques Thibaud conservatory of Bordeaux, while attending the University of Bordeaux III, France, as a bachelor student in musicology. In September 2010, he joined the University of Paris-Sorbonne (Paris-IV) and began his master’s thesis under the supervision of Professor François Madurell. Nicolas Marty’s research field is narrativity and its perception in electroacoustic music (and in all music by extension). His master’s thesis focuses on Journey into Space (1970-72) by Trevor Wishart. In September 2011, Marty begins graduate studies in psychology at the University of Paris-8, while pursuing his second year of master’s at Paris-Sorbonne, with the aim of opening up to music cognitive and psychological research. He published his first paper, “Vers une narratologie naturelle de la musique”, in December 2011, and will participate in the 12th edition of the Electroacoustic Music Studies Network Conference in June 2012.

Read Nicolas Marty’s research report here