Spatial music, music in space, or space music uses the localization of sounds in physical space as a compositional element in music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, in sound art

Sound art

Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists....

, and in sound editing for audio recordings, film, and video. Though present in Western music from Biblical times in the form of the antiphon

Antiphon

An antiphon in Christian music and ritual, is a "responsory" by a choir or congregation, usually in Gregorian chant, to a psalm or other text in a religious service or musical work....

, as a component specific to new musical techniques the concept of "space music

Space music

Space music, also called spacemusic, is an umbrella term, synonymous with a segment of New Age Music and Ambient Music, used to describe music that evokes a feeling of contemplative spaciousness. Space music can be found within a wide range of genres. It is particularly associated with ambient, New...

" (Raummusik) was introduced as early as 1928 in Germany. The term is connected especially with electroacoustic music

Electroacoustic music

Electroacoustic music originated in Western art music during its modern era following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition during the mid-20th century are associated with the activities of composers...

 to denote the projection and localization of sound sources in physical or virtual space or sound's spatial movement in space. The term "spatial music" indicates music in which the location and movement of sound sources is a primary compositional parameter and a central feature for the listener. It may involve a single, mobile sound source, or multiple, simultaneous, stationary or mobile sound events in different locations. There are at least three distinct categories when plural events are treated spatially:

1. essentially independent events separated in space, like simultaneous concerts, each with a strong signaling character
2. one or several such signaling events, separated from more "passive" reverberating background complexes
3. separated but coordinated performing groups.

Examples of spatiality include more than seventy works by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...

 (canticles, litanies, masses, Marian antiphons, psalm- and sequence-motets), Charles Ives

Charles Ives

Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...

's Fourth Symphony

Symphony No. 4 (Ives)

The Symphony No. 4, S. 4 by Charles Ives was written between the years of 1910 and 1916. The symphony is notable for its multi-layered complexity - usually necessitating two conductors in performance - and for its over-sized orchestra...

 (1912–18), Henryk Górecki

Henryk Górecki

Henryk Mikołaj Górecki was a composer of contemporary classical music. He studied at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice between 1955 and 1960. In 1968, he joined the faculty and rose to provost before resigning in 1979. Górecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during...

's Scontri, op. 17 (1960), which unleashes a volume of sound with a "tremendous orchestra" for which the composer precisely dictates the placement of each player onstage, including fifty-two percussion instruments, Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

's Helicopter String Quartet

Helikopter-Streichquartett

The Helikopter-Streichquartett is one of Karlheinz Stockhausen's best-known pieces, and one of the most complex to perform. It involves a string quartet, four helicopters with pilots, as well as audio and video equipment and technicians. It was first performed and recorded in 1995...

(1992–93/95), which is "arguably the most extreme experiment involving the spatial motility of live performers", and Henry Brant

Henry Brant

Henry Dreyfuss Brant was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques.- Biography :...

's Ice Field

Ice Field

Ice Field is a musical composition by Henry Brant, for large orchestral groups and organ, commissioned by Other Minds for a December 2001 premiere by the San Francisco Symphony. It was awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and premiered on December 12 at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco...

, a "'spatial narrative,'" or "spatial organ concerto," awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Music

Pulitzer Prize for Music

The Pulitzer Prize for Music was first awarded in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer did not call for such a prize in his will, but had arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year...

.

Further reading

• Atticks, Barry. 2005. "Utilizing 3-D Computer Animation to Increase Cognitive Understanding of Contemporary Electronic Spacemusic". In Systems Research in the Arts VII: Music, Environmental Design, and the Choreography of Space, edited by George E. Lasker, James Rhodes, and Jane Lily, 141–45. Tecumseh, ON, Canada: International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics. ISBN 978-1-894613-45-3.
• Brant, Henry. 1955. "The Uses of Antiphonal Distribution and Polyphony of Tempi in Composing". American Composer’s Alliance Bulletin 4, no. 3: 13–15.
• Brant, Henry. 1978. "Space as an Essential Aspect of Musical Composition". In Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, edited by Elliott Schwartz and Barney Childs, with Jim Fox, 221–42. Da Capo Press Music Reprint Series. New York: Da Capo Press.
• Brant, Henry, and Frank J. Oteri. 2003. "Spaced Out with Henry Brant
  Henry Brant
  Henry Dreyfuss Brant was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques.- Biography :...
  
  : 4. Spatial Music". New Music Box (January).
• Drennan, Dorothy Carter. 1975. "Henry Brant's Use of Ensemble Dispersion, as Found in the Analysis of Selected Compositions". Ph.D. diss. Coral Gables: University of Miami.
• Erickson, Robert. 1975. Sound Structure in Music. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: The University of California Press.
• Fiotti, Francesco. 2003. "Il Poéme electronique: Un'opera d'arte totale e il suo contenitore". Musica/realtà: Rivista quadrimestrale 24, no. 70 (March): 123–33.
• Gutknecht, Dieter. 2003. "Karlheinz Stockhausens Hymnen und der Aspekt der Raummusik". In Bühne, Film, Raum und Zeit in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts, edited by Hartmut Krones, 275–84. Wiener Schriften zur Stilkunde und Aufführungspraxis 3. Vienna: Böhlau. ISBN 978-3-205-77206-4.
• Harley, Maria Anna. 1994a. "Space and Spatialization in Contemporary Music: History and Analysis, Ideas and Implementations". Ph.D. diss. Montreal: McGill University.
• Harley, Maria. 1994b. "Spatial Sound Movement in the Instrumental Music of Iannis Xenakis". Journal of New Music Research 23:291–314.
• Harley, Maria Anna. 1997. "An American in Space: Henry Brant's 'Spatial Music'". American Music 15, no. 1 (Spring): 70–92.
• Harley, Maria Anna. 1998. "Music of Sound and Light: Xenakis's Polytopes". Leonardo: Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology 31, no. 1 (February): 55–65.
• Hofmann, Boris. 2008. Mitten im Klang: Die Raumkompositionen von Iannis Xenakis aus den 1960er Jahren. Hofheim: Wolke-Verlag.
• Ives, Charles
  Charles Ives
  Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
  
  . 1933. “Music and Its Future”. In American Composers on American Music: A Symposium, edited by Henry Cowell. Reprinted, New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, by arrangement with Stanford University Press, 1962.
• Lombardo, Vincenzo, Andrea Valle, John Fitch, Kees Tazelaar, Stefan Weinzierl, and Wojciech Borczyk. 2009. "A Virtual-Reality Reconstruction of Poème électronique Based on Philological Research". Computer Music Journal 33, no. 2 (Summer): 24–47.
• Loy, Gareth. 1985. "About Audium - A Conversation with Stanley Shaff.” Computer Music Journal 9, no. 2 (Summer): 41–48.
• Luening, Otto. 1968. "An Unfinished History of Electronic Music". Music Educators Journal 55, no. 3 (November): 42–49, 135–42, 145.
• Lukes, Roberta Dorothy. 1996. "The Poème electronique of Edgard Varèse". Ph.D. diss. Cambridge: Harvard University.
• Miller, Paul. 2009. "Stockhausen and the Serial Shaping of Space". Ph.D. diss. Rochester: University of Rochester, Eastman School of Music.
• Müller-Hornbach, Gerhard. 2003. "Phänomene räumlicher Wahrnehmung als Bedingung musikalischer Kompositionen". In Musik und Architektur, edited by Christoph Metzger, 75-81. Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-89727-227-9.
• Nauck, Gisela. 1997. Musik im Raum—Raum in der Musik: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der seriellen Musik. Beihefte zum Archiv fur Musikwissenschaft 38. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
• Nettingsmeier, Jörn. “Ardour and Ambisonics: A FLOSS approach to the next generation of sound spatialisation.” eContact! 11.3 — Logiciels audio « open source » / Open Source for Audio Application (September 2009). Montréal: CEC
  Canadian Electroacoustic Community
  Founded in 1986, La Communauté électroacoustique canadienne / The Canadian Electroacoustic Community is Canada’s national electroacoustic / computer music / sonic arts organization and as such is dedicated to promoting this progressive art form in its broadest definition: from “pure” acousmatic...
  
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• Ouzounian, Gascia. 2007. "Visualizing Acoustic Space". Circuit: Musiques contemporaines 17, no. 3: 45–56.
• Overholt, Sara Ann. 2006. "Karlheinz Stockhausen's Spatial Theories: Analyses of Gruppen fuer drei Orchester and Oktophonie, Electronische Musik vom Dienstag aus LICHT". Ph.D. diss. Santa Barbara: University of California, Santa Barbara.
• Platz, Robert H.P. 2003. "Musikraumarchitektur: Raummusik". In Musik und Architektur, edited by Christoph Metzger, 51-58 Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-89727-227-9.
• Rastall, Richard. 1997. "Spatial Effects in English Instrumental Consort Music, c. 1560–1605". Early Music 25, no. 2:269–88.
• Reynolds, Roger. 1978. "Thoughts on Sound Movement and Meaning". Perspectives of New Music 16, no. 1 (Spring-Summer): 181–90.
• Roschitz, Karlheinz. 1969. "Beiträge 1968/69". Beiträge der Österreichische Gesellschaft für Musik 2.
• Solōmos, Makīs. 1998. "Notes sur la spatialisation de la musique et l'émergence du son". In Le son et l'espace, edited by Hugues Genevois, 105–25. Musique et Sciences. Lyon: Aléas. ISBN 2-908016-96-6.
• Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1957. "Musik im Raum". Die Reihe
  Die Reihe
  Die Reihe was a German-language music journal, edited by Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen and published by Universal Edition between 1955 and 1962 . An English edition was published, under the original German title, between 1957 and 1968 by the Theodore Presser Company , in association...
  
  5 ("Berichte—Analyse"): 59–73. Reprinted in his Texte zur Musik 1, edited by Dieter Schnebel, 152–75. Excerpt reprinted under the same title in Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik 2, 30–35. Mainz: Schott, 1959. English version, as "Music in Space", translated by Ruth Koenig. Die Reihe 5 ("Reports—Analyses", 1961): 67–82.
• Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 2009. Kompositorische Grundlage Neuer Musik: sechs Seminare für die Darmstädter Ferienkurse 1970, edited by Imke Misch. Kürten: Stockhausen-Stiftung für Musik. ISBN 978-3-00-027313-1.
• Sykes, Debra. 1996. "Henry Brant and His Music: Spatialman". Source: Musicworks: Explorations in Sound, no. 64 (Spring): 42–48.
• Teruggi, Daniel. 2007. "Technology and Musique Concrete: The Technical Developments of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales and Their Implication in Musical Composition". Organised Sound 12, no. 3:213–31.
• Thigpen, Ben. “Spatialization Without Panning.” eContact! 11.4 — Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium 2009 (TES) / Symposium Électroacoustique 2009 de Toronto (December 2009). Montréal: CEC
  Canadian Electroacoustic Community
  Founded in 1986, La Communauté électroacoustique canadienne / The Canadian Electroacoustic Community is Canada’s national electroacoustic / computer music / sonic arts organization and as such is dedicated to promoting this progressive art form in its broadest definition: from “pure” acousmatic...
  
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• Trochimczyk, Maja. 2001. "From Circles to Nets: On the Signification of Spatial Sound Imagery in New Music". Computer Music Journal 25, no. 4 (Winter): 39–56.
• Winckel, Fritz. 1968. "Elektroakustische Musik—Raummusik—Kybernetische Musik". Beiträge der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Musik 1:72-79.
• Wörner, Karl H. 1961. "Current Chronicle: Germany". The Musical Quarterly 47, no. 2 (April): 243–47.
• Zelli, Bijan. “Space and Computer Music: A Survey of Methods, Systems and Musical Implications.” eContact! 11.4 — Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium 2009 (TES) / Symposium Électroacoustique 2009 de Toronto (December 2009). Montréal: CEC
  Canadian Electroacoustic Community
  Founded in 1986, La Communauté électroacoustique canadienne / The Canadian Electroacoustic Community is Canada’s national electroacoustic / computer music / sonic arts organization and as such is dedicated to promoting this progressive art form in its broadest definition: from “pure” acousmatic...
  
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• Zvonar, Richard. “An Extremely Brief History of Spatial Music in the 20th Century.” eContact! 7.4 — Diffusion multi-canal / Multichannel diffusion] (May 2005). Montréal: CEC
  Canadian Electroacoustic Community
  Founded in 1986, La Communauté électroacoustique canadienne / The Canadian Electroacoustic Community is Canada’s national electroacoustic / computer music / sonic arts organization and as such is dedicated to promoting this progressive art form in its broadest definition: from “pure” acousmatic...
  
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