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The Materiality of Space*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2015

Peter Nelson
Peter Nelson*
Affiliation:
Reid School of Music, University of Edinburgh, 12 Nicolson Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9DF, UK
*
Email: p.nelson@ed.ac.uk
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Abstract

Space is a concept central to music. Particular spaces can be seen as the enablers and analogues of social configurations for music-making. Thus, for example, concert halls, clubs or cathedrals determine significant aspects of the social and auditory presence of heard music, in terms of concepts such as proximity, separation, resonance, silence, community. Recording technologies have forced us to reconsider musical space as a much more complex phenomenon, including the possible presence of imaginary spaces. Bearing in mind Henri Lefebvre’s assertion that space must be ‘produced’, and starting from Pierre Schaeffer’s notion of spatial development, this article considers the ‘materiality’ of space and the implications of such materiality for thinking about music and sound. Taking the recent reconstruction of the Denman exponential horn at the British Science Museum as an emblem, in relation to the recent resurgence of interest in historic sound recording practices, space is considered in relation to current discussions of material culture.

Type
Articles
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 20 , Issue 3: Aesthetic Radicalism, Future and Past , December 2015 , pp. 323 - 330
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

This article is a revised version of a presentation given as part of a panel, together with Simon Emmerson, Sally Jane Norman and Simon Waters, at the conference Musical Materialities, 27–29 June 2014, University of Sussex.

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