Listening to yourself listen: spatial experience in music for acoustic instruments and electronic sound

Abstract

This is a theoretical and practical research project which explores the listener’s experience of space in contemporary music for acoustic instruments both with and without electronic sound. Existing critical frameworks relating to spatial experience in music are reviewed and potential deficiencies identified. Suggestions are made as to novel approaches which could be used to characterise and abstract spatial experience, moving away from a focus on the geometric and instead based on a conceptualisation of space as fundamentally embodied, dynamic, and co-created. Three new descriptive terms are proposed to be used as lexical tools in both generative and analytical contexts. The thesis is completed by a discussion of the author’s portfolio of original compositions, music written from the author’s personal engagement with spatial experience as a key compositional concern, which both informed, and was informed by, the theoretical elements in an iterative process of experimentation,research and reflection