spatial music

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:Maconie, Robin (2005). Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen (Lanham, Maryland, Toronto, Oxford: The Scarecrow Press.): 296. {{ISBN|0-8108-5356-6}}.

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 (canticles, litanies, masses, Marian antiphons, psalm- and sequence-motets),Lewis Lockwood, Noel O'Regan, and Jessie Ann Owens, "Palestrina [Prenestino, etc.], Giovanni Pierluigi da ['Giannetto']", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001). the five-choir, forty- and sixty-voice Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno by Alessandro Striggio and the possibly related eight-choir, forty-voice motet Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis, as well as a number of other Italian—mainly Florentine—works dating between 1557 and 1601.Davitt Moroney, "Alessandro Striggio's Mass in Forty and Sixty Parts", Journal of the American Musicological Society 60, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 1–69. Citations on 1, 3, 5 et passim.

Notable 20th-century spatial compositions include Charles Ives's Fourth Symphony (1912–18),Jan Swafford, Charles Ives: A Life with Music (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998): 92, 181–182. {{ISBN|0-393-31719-6}}. Rued Langgaard's Music of the Spheres (1916–18),Geoffrey Norris, "[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/proms/7942710/Proms-2010-Prom-35-Danish-National-Symphony-Orchestra-Thomas-Dausgaard.html Proms 2010: Prom 35. A Danish Avant-garde Classic Is Expertly Reappraised.]" (review), The Telegraph (13 August 2010). Edgard Varèse's Poème électronique (Expo '58), Henryk Górecki'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,Jakelski, Lisa (2009) "Górecki's Scontri and Avant-Garde Music in Cold War Poland", The Journal of Musicology 26, no. 2 (Spring): 205–239. Citation on p. 219. Karlheinz Stockhausen's Helicopter String Quartet (1992–93/95), which is "arguably the most extreme experiment involving the spatial motility of live performers",Solomon, Jason Wyatt (2007), "Spatialization in Music: The Analysis and Interpretation of Spatial Gestures", Ph.D. diss. (Athens: University of Georgia): p. 60. and Henry Brant's Ice Field, a "'spatial narrative,'"Anon. (2002), "Brant's 'Field' Wins Pulitzer", Billboard, 114, no. 16 (April 20): 13. ISSN 0006-2510. or "spatial organ concerto,"(2008). Musicworks, no. 100 (Spring), 101 (Summer), or 102 (Winter): 41. Music Gallery.{{Full citation needed|date=November 2011|reason=Author, title of article, and inclusive pages needed. In addition, Musicworks paginates issues separately, so there are three separate pages numbered 41 in issues 100, 101, and 102. Page 41 in issue 101 is in the middle of an article by Eve Egoyan and Gayle Young on Ann Southam, so that isn't likely the right one. In no. 100 (Spring), pp. 36–42 are Jordan Nobles, 'Music's Fourth Dimention' on Vancouver's Redshift Music Society; in no. 102 (Winter), p. 41 falls between two articles, 'Crossing Borders: Yvat—Romania's Electronic Performer' by Sabine Bürger and Tim Beeby (pp. 34–40) and 'In Club or Concert Hall: The Fabulous Jody Redhage' by Christian Carey (pp. 42–48)}} awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Music, as well as most of the output after 1960 of Luigi Nono, whose late works—e.g., ... sofferte onde serene ... (1976), Al gran sole carico d'amore (1972–77), Prometeo (1984), and A Pierre: Dell'azzurro silenzio, inquietuum (1985)—explicitly reflect the spatial soundscape of his native Venice, and cannot be performed without their spatial component.Andrea Santini, "Multiplicity—Fragmentation—Simultaneity: Sound-Space as a Conveyor of Meaning, and Theatrical

Roots in Luigi Nono's Early Spatial Practice", Journal of the Royal Musical Association 137, no. 1 (2012): 71–106 {{doi|10.1080/02690403.2012.669938}}, citations on 101, 103, 105.

Technological developments have led to broader distribution of spatial music via smartphones since at least 2011,{{Cite web|last=Dehaan|first=Daniel|date=2019|title=Compositional Possibilities of New Interactive and Immersive Digital Formats|url=https://arch.library.northwestern.edu/downloads/7d278t245?locale=en|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=12 September 2020|website=Northwestern University}} to include sounds experienced via Global Positioning System localization (BLUEBRAIN,{{Cite news|last=Richards|first=Chris|date=28 May 2011|title=Bluebrain make magic with the world's first location aware album|newspaper=The Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/click-track/post/bluebrain-make-magic-with-the-worlds-first-location-aware-album/2011/05/28/AGSVQSDH_blog.html|access-date=12 September 2020}} Matmos,{{Cite news|last=Weigel|first=Brandon|date=1 October 2015|title=Your hurricane soundtrack is here: download this new interactive app from Matmos|work=The Baltimore Sun|url=https://www.baltimoresun.com/citypaper/bcpnews-your-hurricane-soundtrack-is-here-download-this-new-interactive-app-from-matmos-20151001-story.html|access-date=12 September 2020}} others) and visual inertial odometry through augmented reality (TCW,{{Cite web|last=Palladino|first=Tommy|date=17 April 2019|title=New iPhone App Fills Your Living Room with a Virtual Orchestra|url=https://mobile-ar.reality.news/news/new-iphone-app-fills-your-living-room-with-virtual-orchestra-0196258/|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=12 September 2020|website=Next Reality}}{{Cite web|last=Copps|first=Will|date=14 April 2019|title=Building Augmented Reality Spatial Audio Compositions for iOS|url=http://www.tcwav.com/ARAudioGuide.pdf|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=12 September 2020|website=TCW A/V}} others).

In 2024, Julius Dobos conducted research which resulted in the paper Spatial Composition – and What It Means for Immersive Audio Production.{{Cite web |last=Dobos |first=Julius |date=2024-11-03 |title=Spatial Composition - and What It Means for Immersive Audio Production |url=https://www.juliusdobos.com/the-philosophy-behind/spatial-composition-and-what-it-means-for-immersive-audio-production/ |access-date=2025-05-11 |website=Julius Dobos |language=en-US}} As part of the research, focus groups compared alternative compositions which were created while the composer was monitoring audio in stereo and spatial systems, respectively, during the writing process. Listeners evaluated musical differences between the resulting "stereo" and "spatial" compositions while listening to both on identical playback systems, thus, removing the exhibition format variables and exclusively comparing musical content. The paper concludes: "Space is a potent and influential element to use in composition" and "while using space as a compositional element might not result in a composition objectively superior to one created without any spatial consideration, [...] space as a musical component is clearly responsible for inspiring significant enough content differences to cause some listeners to prefer the result." The paper proposes "the widespread acceptance of space as a compositional element of music" and urges the prioritization of conceptual spatial choices made by music composers over spatial mixing choices made by mixing engineers during audio production.

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• 5.1 surround sound
• 3D audio effect
• Ambisonics
• Auditory spatial attention
• Audium (theater)
• Directional sound
• Dolby Atmos
• Holophones
• Octophonic sound
• Planephones
• Quadraphonic sound
• Stereophonic sound
• Surround sound
• Ton de Leeuw
• Venetian polychoral style
• Venetian School (music)
• Wave field synthesis

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{{reflist}}

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