SPATIAL MUSIC: ARTIST STORIES Erwin Roebroeks (Ed.) Wouter Snoei Yannis Kyriakides Arthur Sauer Kees Tazelaar Robert Henke Roel Funcken Miguel Negrão Ji Youn Kang Konrad Boehmer T H E G A M E O F L I F E ## Introduction Europe, yet subsequently 1 What is musical space? declined with the advent 2 What is your approach Venice circa 1600, of concert life, when music to and/or experience St. Mark’s Basilica. began to travel and was with spatial music? Diverse choirs, ensembles therefore no longer tailored 3 How important is and soloists are placed at to a specific situation. spatial music to you? different locations in the Centuries later, musical 4 Any future plans/ church to perform music space has acquired possibilities? composed especially for renewed emphasis, this structure by Giovanni this time in the context The first Wave Field Gabrieli. Delays caused by of electronic music. Synthesis pieces were the spatial disposition of the Composers like Edgard composed by Wouter Snoei performers form a structural Varèse, Iannis Xenakis, and Yannis Kyriakides, and component of the music, Karlheinz Stockhausen Snoei also designed the which is the culmination of and Luigi Nono composed WFS system’s software. the Venetian technique of the physical and the sonic Arthur Sauer is the spiritual cori spezzati, “split choirs” space of their music as father of The Game of Life. or polychoral music. unities. Kees Tazelaar is also the head of the Institute of What exactly was The Game of Life Sonology at The Hague’s happening here, at this Foundation is aimed Royal Conservatory. Robert crucial period in Western at composers who are Henke (aka Monolake) music history? Was this interested not only in the and Roel Funcken (aka spatial music a new means sound of their music but one of the Funckarma of musical communication? also in composing space, brothers) are artists with Was it a decentralization and offers artists a tool a notable reputation in of the musical act, in line with which to create sonic dance music. Miguel with music’s transformation spaces. This is called Wave Negrão co-developed from a prescriptive liturgical Field Synthesis (WFS), a the live application of the tool into a free dramatic state-of-the-art technology WFS system. Ji Youn artform? Or was it just sheer specially designed for Kang studied with the coincidence, triggered by spatial sound rendering. shamanistic masters of the astonishing possibilities WFS not only offers the traditional South Korean for echoes between St. possibility to position or music before coming to Mark’s numerous domes? move sounds inside a Europe. Finally, Konrad If so, why didn’t it happen venue, but also enables Boehmer has not himself centuries earlier? Was composers to create a sonic made WFS music, but is Gabrieli’s spatialization the space which is bigger than interviewed as an expert on result of a compositional the physical venue itself. spatial composition. urge sonically to recompose The Game of Life’s WFS Their answers are as diverse St. Mark’s, to create a system consists of 192 as their music. space within a space? And loudspeakers, and is the if so, what is expressed only mobile and real-time Erwin thereby? In short: what is WFS system in the world. the nature of this musical Roebroeks space? I asked a diverse selection Co-founder and board member of composers who have The Game of Life Beginning at St. Mark’s, this made music for this system technique of composing for the same four questions specific structures gained regarding their own musical popularity throughout space: 3 To me space can be many sounds. When I make some extent in the music things. When I work with music for those kinds of of Ji [Youn Kang, ER]. She the Wave Field Synthesis situations, I tend also to has a clear idea of what system, I consider sounds think of my spatialization her movements mean, and to be objects which live from that point of view. And there are many circular in a certain space. With when the sound doesn’t movements around the the WFS system, I tend to come from the stage, there audience. At a certain point see the objects in a two- will be a good reason for these movements cease to dimensional space. I don’t this. Furthermore, there have the nature of graphical really mind that the space has to be a reason that the painting and become isn’t three-dimensional, music comes through the something else. We need to since I can imagine the walls. I like music to be figure out what that is. objects themselves to be alive and to be nearby. three-dimensional. In reality Furthermore, the WFS sound is not an object, but All music is spatial, system now offers something that is caused although not all composers the possibility of live by an object, but in music, think consciously about performance. To me that’s to me, sounds themselves this aspect. Even a non- the most interesting aspect become objects. electronic orchestral piece at the moment, because I is spatial. So to me, spatial like to see physical action Space is also the realm music is very important. directly connected with in which the music can sound movement. exist. So there are limits. I am not so sure any more Space, at least in music, is about creating sound- something that is confined movements. I still like Wouter within limits, for instance sounds to move, but Snoei limits in physical space, the way I think about or limits in pitch. As a movement, and how to composer, I need those design movement, has limits. changed. If I take a preset circle, triangle, or square My approach changes from on the computer screen, composition to another. I don’t hear a circle, For Wave Field Synthesis, triangle, or square in space. I have a specific approach Maybe that’s caused by in which I consider musical differences between seeing sounds as objects which and hearing. The behaviour may be freely moved. of a sound is now more Furthermore, I try to apply important to me than the reasoning to the positioning actual path it follows. For of these objects. I need to instance, the speed of ask consciously: where will a moving sound is more my sound be, and for what important than its exact reason? I think that’s the spatial co-ordinates. case for any musical piece. For example, if you have The movement aspect of a stage with musicians on Wave Field Synthesis is not it, then the most logical as advanced as it could situation is for the sounds be. Certain movements to be also on stage, in so could be made to acquire far as they aren’t electronic a meaning. I hear this to 5 I often bring up the layers and hierarchies, Aboriginal Australians subject of space with putting certain sounds thought of it already, but I my students. When I talk in certain dimensions. was struck by its potential. about creating space in You create a sense of a composition, I mean three-dimensional space I have always been creating a sense or feeling with the sounds, but it interested in the idea of of time within it. That’s a isn’t trying to assert this space within space, space metaphorical description multi-dimensionality with outside of space. I like the of space, related to how movement, because the destabilizing element of we experience music. music is changing, because inferring other spaces - it’s Regarding my own music, time is doing that for you. one of the things music I used to think of it as a and especially electronic space into which you can I remember, having done music does well. At the enter and move around the WFS piece, feeling moment I am involved in a freely. that we were at the very piece with musikFabrik and beginning of a new IOU theatre based on the Space and time are aesthetics. How do we idea of vortex, air rings and obviously linked. If you listen to WFS music? What vorticity. It’s fascinating to create an illusion of space information does it give us? learn about how velocity in your composition, it’s It is interesting that one of and pressure, and not only controlled with time, both the characteristic ways in time, affect the physical in a technical sense, as well which WFS defines itself creation of space. as in an artistic sense. You is with the moving sound create space by creating object. How do you take delay between things, or the sense of an object, the Yannis by relating things to each cause of a sound, out of the Kyriakides other in time, and between effect of sound, out of how the space of the music we listen to music? itself and the space of the listener. This relation is Space is really an important interesting, because you issue for me. I am can problematize it, set fascinated by the idea I put up questions between the into a recent composition, virtual compositional space Disco Debris, literally to and the actual space in map space directly onto which the music is being time. This is an interactive heard. installation where one walks through granulated, My approach has changed. or metaphorically speaking, I was never really into ‘frozen’ voices, and the moving sounds in space, movement of the listener but I tried something like in the space becomes that with my Wave Field the time element in the Synthesis piece, because composition.