This dissertation presents a case study of Maryanne Amacher. I aim to offer a conceptualization of Amacher’s artistic output while simultaneously providing a unified, three-part catalogic perspective, history, and analysis of her major works. By offering a catalogic perspective (split between her three works, City-Links, Music for Sound-Joined Rooms, and Sound Characters (making the third ear)), I aim to introduce Amacher’s oeuvre in a coherent expository form. In the spirit of relational analysis, I intersect Amacher’s work with a cohort of contemporaneous composers—namely Helmut Lachenmann, Alvin Lucier, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Trevor Wishart, and Iannis Xenakis—who shared artistic kinships, both close and distant, with Amacher. Additionally, to better frame and analyze Amacher’s work, I draw upon theoretical formations of the work-concept from Lydia Goehr, organological perspectives from Emily I. Dolan and John Tresch, scientific research on otoacoustic emissions from various authors, and institutional theories from Mary Douglas (among others). I draw on these scholars and their corresponding theories to help advance a nuanced and theoretically significant view of Amacher’s work. Ultimately, I argue that Amacher, harnessing new perspectives of the work-concept, instrumentality, and perception, drew on her insider/outsider relationship to the field of Western music composition to explore the boundary conditions of the field itself. Working in the corresponding liminal, exploratory space, Amacher’s oeuvre encourages a reflection on the conditions that constitute the field of Western music composition and the variety of artistic and creative decisions that arise therein.