Introduction to Spatial Music

• Spatial music explores physical and perceived spaces in composition.
• Involves arrangement of performers and audience, and acoustic properties.
• Creates illusions of space within music.
• Explores historical and modern techniques.

Listening as a weapon: acoustic defense in WWI

• Before radar, France and Britain located aircraft by ear.
• The Baillaud paraboloid (1916) was a concave dish up to 3 meters across that focused the 80 to 130 Hz exhaust notes of aircraft engines onto a stethoscope-style receiver. Its inventor was an astronomer who assumed mirrors behave the same for sound as for light.
• Soldiers trained at dedicated écoles d’écoute, schools of listening, near Paris in 1917 and 1918.

No best seat in the house: Henry Brant

• Brant’s rule, published in 1954: spatial music must reject the single “optimum seat.” Every seat hears a different piece, and the composer accepts the blend.
• He separated ensembles in space to escape harmonic clutter. Distance let clashing timbres coexist, which is the cocktail-party effect used as an orchestration tool.
• He refused loudspeakers, because their directivity does not radiate the way instruments do. Every playback system in this course is arguing with Brant.

Spatial Arrangements in Music

• Point: A soloist centrally located for an intimate focus.
• Line Segment: Performers arranged in a line, as in Ton de Leeuw’s Car nos vignes sont en fleur.
  • Listen here .
• Two Line Segments: Two groups facing each other from a distance, as in Louis Andriessen’s Hoketus.
  • Watch here .
• Triangle: Three ensembles positioned to form a triangle, used in Stockhausen’s Gruppen.
  • Watch here .

More Spatial Arrangements

• Square: Four choirs positioned at the corners of a square, as in Stockhausen’s Carré.
• Hexagon: Six percussionists in a hexagon, as in Xenakis’s Persephassa.
  • Watch here .
• Circle: Performers surrounding the audience in a circle, such as in Xenakis’s Terretektorh or Henry Brant’s Orbits.
  • Watch Orbits here .
• Sphere: A spherical arrangement of sound sources surrounding the audience, envisioned by Stockhausen in Spiral.

Electronic Spatialization and Installations

• Electronic music expanded spatial possibilities with multi-channel setups.
• Stockhausen’s Kontakte uses rotating speakers to create movement in sound.
  • Listen here .
• Oliveros’s Deep Listening merges environmental acoustics with musical improvisation.
  • Listen here .
• Installations like Dream House and Forty Part Motet offer immersive sound environments.
  • Watch Dream House , Watch Forty Part Motet .

Audience as a Speaker Array

• The audience can actively participate in creating spatial music.
• Dialtones: A Telesymphony used mobile phones as part of the performance.
  • Watch here .
• OK GO’s Needing/Getting turned a car into a spatial instrument.
  • Watch here .
• Modern performances utilize apps for audience interaction and spatial effects.