The use of space in musical performance.

the use of space in musical performance....around the potentialities of audible space.

http://gilmore2.chem.northwestern.edu/articles/steven_art.htm

The spatial location of musical sources has often been a concern in the theatre. There are many examples of on or off stage bands in opera, here the concerns are clearly with the shaping of the dramatic action. However, musical space has clearly been an area of interest for a wide range of composers within the Western Canon.

The age of the machine brought new inspiration for defining space with sound.The ‘intonarumori’ or noise instruments of Luigi Russolo (1885-1947), inspired originally by the sounds of war, where designed to project noises into an auditorium. His futurist manifesto 'The Art of Noises' rejoiced in the acoustic and spatial character of the modern mechanised environment.

Motion is a device for musical expression and as such has become a musical paradigm. Musical space is often measured in the dimensions of pitch, harmony, texture and rhythm or time. Musical motion occurs within this space. In addition to this usage of space, much musical discussion is embued with dynamic qualities of human emotion. These ideas have contributed to the multilayered, metaphoric connotations of space whose relations are wholly paradigmatic or associative.

Traditionally, musical aesthetics has dealt with the issues of meaning and aesthetic value. I would like to look at some contemporary perspectives on the use of space in electroacoustic music. Much in musical language is arbitrary and its function rests on convention. It is likely, however, that our auditory perception of space and its relation to meaning is grounded in every day experience of the physical world. Moreover, the expressive gap filled by the metaphor of motion in music may be closed when actual spatial motion becomes a part of compositional practice.

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Stockhausen uses three orchestras situated around the audience. In this piece he attempts, according to Worner[5] , to establish a polyphony in time and in space. Here we see space compared with the traditional compositional elements of pitch, harmony and time. Polyphony of space suggests the interplay of two or more sound spaces as well as space being one of the musical properties of a melodic line. Stockhausen adopts a seemingly formalist approach to space. For him the property of space is an entirely intrinsic property. He uses space in order to better articulate the temporal complexities of his composition.

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Wittgenstein’s discussions on musical understanding may help to shed some light on the contrast between the abstract and the referential in musical language. Wittgenstein suggests that understanding a musical theme is easier than understanding a sentence. This is because the music does not bear complex relations of linguistic referents that are found in the words of a sentence. Still we understand a sentence in much the same way we understand a musical theme. Space like other musical parameters does not bear semantic meaning and yet we can interpret audible space by applying our experience and an innate or learned set of governing rules. For Wittgenstein music is highly abstract and yet we understand it by understanding the system of rules within which it operates. Our ability to understand audible space is a product of our experience and understanding, in Wittgenstein’s terms, this implies a degree of expertise. This is true of both language and music.

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Denis Smalley:
space as one of his ‘indicative fields’. He posits the argument that musical apprehension of sounds exists on a continuum between merely informational use of sound and a more aesthetically involving, interactive engagement with the subtle qualities of a sound.

These aspects of space are those which lie within the interactive relationships between the listener and musical sounds. His discussion centres on the indicative character of space and its interpretation by the listener.

He describes the indeterminacy arising from what he calls the ‘superimposed space’ which is the combination of the properties of the composed space and the listening space. This may result in the alteration of the indicative interpretation of the piece.

describes three indicative properties of space:
. The principal property is ‘spatial texture’. This concerns the topology of the audible space. Size, he argues, is the most important indicative property. It may express a range of meanings which are fundamental to human experience: he outlines the contrasts between 'intimacy and immensity' and 'confinement and vastness'. He suggests the psychological or emotional states that may result from either of these extremes. Other aspects of spatial texture include the density of distribution of sounds, the spatial contiguousness of sounds and the movement of sounds.

The second spatial property which may bear meaning is ‘spatial orientation’. He employs the metaphors of 'sound confronting from ahead or stealing up from behind' to describe the potential of spatial orientation. Interestingly, he follows Wishart[8] in suggesting that there is no differentiation between left and right. This position is countered by Truax[9] and Wallin[10] as I will outline later. He does, however, include the case of circumfrentially enclosing sound which Wishart conspicuously excludes from his seemingly exhaustive enumeration of spatial possibilities.

The final spatial property in Smalley’s exposition is ‘temporal space’. This describes the evolution of space over time resulting in impressions of stability, permanence or rapid change. Smalley coins the term ‘spatio-morphology’ to describe the evolution of the spatial components, described above, in electroacoustic composition.

Trevor Wishart :
His stated objective is to analyse the vocabulary of spatial motion without attempting to define its language. comment on the meaning-bearing aspects of each type of motion. He denies that beyond the subtle aspects of left and right handedness, there can be any significant differentiation between sources coming from or moving to either side of the listener.
This position is refuted by N. C. Wallin in his book 'Biomusicology - Neurophysiological, Neuropsychological and Evolutionary Perspectives on the Origins and Purposes of Music'[12] in which he details the functional asymmetry of the hemispheres of the brain and its influence on the perception and processing of musical sound.


Barry Truax takes up this point. He details the role of the two hemispheres in the different levels of hearing that may be involved in the perception of different The location of the speech function in the left hemisphere and this hemisphere’s popular association with analytical processes stands in contrast to the supposed synthetic and associative powers of the right hemisphere.sounds.


l however, that listeners cannot share a common experience or interpretation of audible space. Or, indeed, that the composers intentions will not, in some form, be perceived by the listener. Obviously, the fact that space has been employed successfully by so many composers in the past, and that it continues to be explored as a musical device, means that it has earned its place in musical language and will surely continue to grow in importance. Theoretical interest in the use of space in composition has occupied much space in the literature of contemporary music. Analysis of its use and exploration of its potential by theorists and composers presents great scope for research and development.

The technical difficulties outlined above are being continually addressed by research and advanced electroacoustic practice. Great progress is being made both in the predictable use of electroacoustic devices and in the treatment and control of acoustic spaces. New auditorium designs, sensitive to the needs of electroacoustic performance must surely help to narrow the gap between the composers spatial design and its performance realisation. New techniques for spatial encoding and advanced signal processing[16] for multi-channel playback are presenting a viable way forward for the development of spatial composition. These developments do not inhibit the performance of live sound diffusion, where this is seen as the aesthetically appropriate approach to the realisation of the inherent spatial properties of a piece. On the contrary, they will provide the performer with new and flexible tools and enhance the expressive possibilities of this form of live interpretation.

Being aware of the limitations and potential pitfalls of spatial expression can only improve our understanding of this exciting dimension in musical language. This understanding must help us to explore the wealth of musical material that exploits audible space and open the horizons to new and innovative work in the future.