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Spatiality of sound and stream segregation in twentieth century instrumental music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 1998

MARIA ANNA HARLEY
Affiliation:
Polish Music Reference Center, Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0851, USA. E-mail: maharley@usc.edu

Abstract

Let us imagine a situation: a listener seated in a concert hall witnesses a performance by a trumpet player (standing onthe stage) of a sequence of four quarter-notes, with the pitches ofB[flat]3–A3–C4–B3. The listener chooses to ignore the immediatephysical surroundings and hears one of the following: (i) four trumpetsounds equally spaced in time, (ii) a sequence of intervals – minor second,minor third, minor second, (iii) an instance of set 4-1, (iv) a motivereferring to the name of BACH. The `web of interpretants' (term from Nattiez1987/1990) surrounding a simple musical fact is already quite dense, eventhough we have only considered its aspects relating to pitch, pitch classand pitch notation (representation by letters). What if the performer'sgestures, the facial expressions, the direction of the bell of theinstrument became important? Might one say, then, that the music has becometheatre?

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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