audiation

English

WOTD – 10 March 2019

Etymology

Presumably audio +‎ -ation, coined by American music researcher and educator Edwin E. Gordon (1927–2015), possibly in Learning Sequence and Patterns in Music (1976).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɔːdɪˈeɪʃən/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌɔdiˈeɪʃən/
• Hyphenation: au‧di‧a‧tion

Noun

audiation (countable and uncountable, plural audiations)

1. (music) The comprehension and internal realization of music by an individual in the absence of any physical sound. [from 1970s]
   • 1976, Edwin E. Gordon, “Development of the Taxonomies”, in Tonal and Rhythm Patterns: An Objective Analysis: A Taxonomy of Tonal Patterns and Rhythm Patterns and Seminal Experimental Evidence of Their Difficulty and Growth Rate, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, →ISBN, footnote 2, page 7:

     Audiation takes place when one hears music through recall or creation (the sound not being physically present) and infers musical meaning as compared to aural perception where one listens to music actually being performed.

   • 1992, Stan Godlovitch, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, →OCLC, page 7; republished as “Performances and Musical Works”, in Musical Performance: A Philosophical Study, London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 1998, →ISBN, part II (Challenges to the Model), page 91:

     [P]erformance always faces the risk of failure. One may get the notes right but quite misconstrue the work. One can discover one’s problems and then correct them. Private ‘audiations’ are systematically insulated from the ambient environment critique performance lives in. If being acquainted with the work in one’s head involves the same demands as becoming acquainted with it in public, presumably one can get it all wrong.

   • 1995, John T[homas] Partington, “Pre-concert Preparation”, in Making Music, [Ottawa, Ont.]: Carleton University Press, →ISBN, page 127:

     Some performers spend considerable time reviewing the score and experiencing the music through audiation, or engage in internal dialogue to get themselves into the right orientation to play while others complete a technical/physical warm-up with their instruments, playing both exercises and parts of the repertoire.

   • 2003, Edwin E. Gordon, “Part Six: Imitation”, in A Music Learning Theory for Newborn and Young Children, Chicago, Ill.: GIA Publications, →ISBN, page 86:

     Children will stare for a few seconds at the parent, teacher, or another person as they become aware that there is a difference between their own singing or chanting and someone else's. […] In a sense, children are now attempting to enter the world of audiation. At this point, however, they do not know how to correct their singing, chanting, or movement and, thus, they are unable to begin to cope with audiation.

   • 2008, Michael Long, “Listening in Dark Places”, in Beautiful Monsters: Imagining the Classic in Musical Media, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Calif., London: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 157:

     Rock's fantasists and their immediate parents, like the Beats, invented their visions and audiations from a vocabulary of imaginary sound and time spaces (thus, perhaps, "audiochronotopes").

Related terms

• audiate

Translations

comprehension and internal realization of music by an individual in the absence of any physical sound

• French: audiation f
• Galician: audiación f
• Portuguese: audiação f
• Spanish: audiación f

Further reading

• Gordon music learning theory on Wikipedia.Wikipedia