Mitten im Klang

Since the mid-20th century, space and music have been increasingly linked through new compositional concepts and genres of sound art. In the spatial music of Greek-French composer Iannis Xenakis, space becomes an integral part of the music, as it shapes form and structure and significantly influences material and disposition.

This book provides the first detailed analyses of Xenakis' spatially conceived works Terretektorh (1965/66) for 88 musicians distributed throughout the space and Persephassa (1969) for six percussionists. Taking a practical approach, it examines the novel listening experience offered by these compositions and explores the auditory impression that concertgoers should actually have from their seats. To this end, a special model of a virtual three-dimensional space was developed, as it might form in the listener's imagination. Different spatial conditions, their variants, and combinations generate the different formal elements and developments.

Based on the results obtained, a comprehensive spatial aesthetic of the composer and architect Xenakis is described. In it, the author classifies the instrumental compositions examined in a line of development from the early architectural works to the Polytopes series. The spatial music serves primarily to add an additional acoustic-musical level of perception to an existing architectural space. This gives the space a temporal component, making it dynamic and variable, which also leads to a variability of the entire work: thus, the musical composition in space becomes a spatial composition.

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