Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between the sound of a certain playable sound-sculpture, the bow chime, and the notion of the sublime. Noted by many critics for its power and profundity, the sound of this late 1960s invention perhaps epitomises the idea of a so-called “sublime experience”: it prompts an unnerving moment; a moment that unsettles and overwhelms its listeners; an experience in which words fail and all points of comparison disappear. Drawing upon the ideas of philosophers such as Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-François Lyotard, this thesis attempts to sketch out a few of the processes through which such feelings of sublimity may arise in the encounter with this sound. The discussion is specifcally centred around three of the author's experiences, each of which focuses on common characteristics of the bow chime's sound. Overall, this thesis will form three proposals as to the nature of the bow chime's sublimity, which concern, respectively, the terror of the sound's intense loudness, the unimaginable nature of its prolonged duration, and the 'strangeness' of its timbre.