Hybrid Listening Cultures: Theodorakis’ Symphony No. 1 (1943–1945) and Universal Harmony

Aural embodiment and ‘situated sonic practices’ have been already approached by Ouzounian (Contemporary Music Review, 25: 70, 2006) under the prism of sound, space and time, unveiling their complex, but dynamic variables, especially when it comes to ‘body-based’ sound installations. Investigating how her ‘body, its surroundings and its imaginary points’ respond, interact and correlate with their social, cultural, physical, personal, political and/or imaginary settings, she aimed to describe, visualise and understand them as scores or sound stages (Ibid., 71). This chapter aims to approach aural embodiment and the auditory experience, as seen through the specificities of a listening culture, where Droumeva’s and Andrisani’s (Interference: A Journal of Audio Culture: 1, 2011) observations will help guide several aspects across them. Despite the fact that their ‘experientially-oriented ethnography of embodied aurality’ was mostly focused on ‘technologically mediated aural practices’, their theoretical framework sheds some light into spatial practices, religious rituals, cultural conceptions, social perspectives and aural corporeality. Placing them into a specific context of current musical and compositional practices, whether related to pre-pandemic and/or post-pandemic remote and blended environments of interaction, offers considerable grounds to trace such expressive cultures, which reinforce both participants’ and practitioners’ sensory experiences, creative mindfulness and performative awareness. As the case-studies under investigation in the chapter approach a hybrid perception (and reception) of aural awareness, they also seem to develop a meaningful impact over identity construction and community spirit, through which both musical and non-musical aspects arise. By embracing philosophical, social, cultural, spiritual, historical or even political ideas and educational perspectives, they eventually tend to suggest a latent thread, which connects aural embodiment with actual musical scores, notation, performance and/or recordings, shaping thus hybrid listening cultures.