Composing Music with a Space

COMPOSING MUSIC WITH A SPACE FILIPE LOPES AND CARLOS GUEDES 1. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OUND, SPACE, AND MUSIC MAKING ARE RELATED since pre-history (Cross and Watson 2006; Hendy 2013), and the in uence of space in music making, both of enclosed and open spaces, is undeniable. Plainchant, for example, has a typical sonic character (i.e., music sung in spaces with long reverberation), while traditional African music has a typical rhythmic essence (Long 2006). Both examples were in uenced by reverberation (or the lack of it), and both matured by mutual in uences between the music being performed and the space where it was usually performed. Our interest in space and music composition ourished from a simple idea: since it is the condition of any artwork to be presented in a space and in time, any musical composition that is clearly assumed to be structured and based on a particular space must be supported by additional premises. In other words, the composition needs to have stronger conceptual and practical ties to a space, something we call a structural connection. By structural connection we mean intentionally nding, creating, developing, and anchoring (i.e., structuring) a musical composition on A performance of Carlos Guedes’s Jinn (see section 3.4) is available on the Perspectives of New Music YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/c/PerspectivesofNewMusic. S 6 Perspectives of New Music speci c features of a space, as well as integrating them in the overall framework. We are not merely addressing issues that are related to constraints (e.g., adjusting performance tempo to excessive reverberation ) but to speci c features (e.g., sounds of the soundscape, acoustical effects) that become compositional features. An analysis of musical works that deliberately explore site speci cities shows that there are a myriad of means to combine sound and space. For example, I am sitting in a room (1969) by Alvin Lucier, Music for Wilderness Lake (1979) by Murray Schafer, 4’33” (1952) by John Cage, or Quodlibet (1990–91) by Emmanuel Nunes combine the musical composition with the performance space; however, resulting from quite contrasting compositional attitudes. Generally speaking, the compositional approach to tie a composition to its performance space is structured: (1) on exploring acoustical phenomena (e.g., reverberation, resonance frequencies, and positioning of sound sources within the physical space, among others), commonly termed aural architecture, such as in the work by Alvin Lucier and Emmanuel Nunes, or (2) by exploring sound environment phenomena (nature sounds, industrial sounds, speech, and noise, among others), commonly termed soundscape, such as in the work of Murray Schafer and John Cage. The term “aural architecture” refers to interaction of sound with surfaces, objects, and the geometry of a given environment (Blesser and Salter 2007); whereas, “soundscape” refers to an environment of sound with emphasis on the way it is perceived or understood by individuals or society (Truax 1999). In this paper we assume that aural architecture and soundscape, as well as interactions between them, characterize the sonic expressiveness of a space. In other words, sonic expressiveness refers to the sonic behaviors and sound particularities of a given space that possess potential to become structural, to be integrated in a music composition, and to be engaged during performance. Based on the preceding paragraph, it seems that there are at least two generic types of features retrieved from a space that can be used to structure a composition: the ones from aural architecture and the ones from soundscape. Nowadays, both features have a rich legacy in musical compositions (e.g., Luigi Russolo, Pierre Schaeffer, Edgard Varèse, John Cage, Murray Schafer, Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, Max Neuhaus, Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, Bill Fontana, Pedro Rebelo) and have been enjoying attention from many composers, musicians, academics, and artists. There are many ways to combine music and space. One can say that when comparing two or more compositions that are clearly assumed to be structured on a particular space, there are musical compositions that Composing Music with a Space 7 have a stronger or weaker structural connection with that space. That is, the more abundant the connections created/found/exploited/ employed between a composition (i.e., compositional process and performance) and...