Scoring space in the open work and portfolio of original compositions

Thesis

The central focus of this thesis is the elucidation and application of a new analytical framework, connecting existing discourses on sound, space, and place in late twentieth and early twenty-first century “open form” music, and sound installation art. It builds especially on Richard Sennett’s urban understanding of openness, which helps to generate a model for the analysis of musical open form beyond only the relationship between the performer and the score. At the same time, it explores the role of space and place in music performance, interrogating the manner in which the environment shapes different realisations of indeterminate musics. Whereas many existing accounts of the spaces in and of music performance focus predominantly on the technical or locative elements of spatial sound, this dissertation is informed by contemporary spatial and urban theory as well as architectural studies in its more generative and expansive understanding of space. This thesis constructs space beyond tectonics, incorporating and acknowledging social, political, corporeal, architectural, and acoustic factors that inform and transform our experience of sound. Methodologically speaking, this thesis references interviews with the composers, performers and audience members of sonic artworks in combination with more conventional musicological analysis of audiovisual media, seeking to emphasise incidents and sentiments that don’t fit grander conceptual or composer-centric narratives but help to draw out a more everyday, lived experience of sound. Substantial analyses of Lin Chi-Wei’s ongoing participatory composition Tape Music and Claudia Molitor’s locative audio work Sonorama help to illustrate the value of this framework across two large case studies.

Authors: Packham, J

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-y0obxkz1x
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: space; open form; experimental music; graphic scores; spatiality; sound art
• Subjects: Space; Sound art; Music