An Adventure into Outer Space: Stockhausen's Lichter-Wasser and the Analysis of Spatialized Music
Paul Miller · Perspectives of New Music · 2012
AN ADVENTURE INTO OUTER SPACE: STOCKHAUSEN’S LICHTER—WASSER AND THE ANALYSIS OF SPATIALIZED MUSIC PAUL MILLER HE MOVEMENT OF SOUND in the space around listeners—or, musical “spatialization”—is one of the oldest techniques for enlivening the experience of music. Many musicians and composers throughout history have found ingenious ways of using physical space, ranging from singers of medieval chant to composers such as Gabrieli, Dowland, Berlioz, Mahler, and Ives.1 However, composers’ abilities to control space in their music increased dramatically in the 1950s with the development and use of multi-channel electronic sound projection.2 Within the last twenty years or so, a second revolution has occurred thanks to sophisticated computer software and increased processing power. These innovations have allowed designers and T An Adventure into Outer Space 343 composers unprecedented control in creating complex effects in the space around listeners, and also spurred composers to develop new compositional techniques to organize this musical domain.3 Electronic spatialization has also influenced non-electronic instrumental music. Several recent studies have appreciated the possibilities for analyzing the compositional techniques that composers have developed to spatialize music.4 Some of the most useful work in this regard has been directed towards music of Xenakis, who composed several notable spatialized pieces including Pithoprakta (1956), Eonta (1963–64), Terretektorh (1965–66), and others (Maria Harley 1994, 292). Many other studies focus on the spatialized music of Stockhausen. For the analyst, this musical spatialization poses many thorny problems. First, room acoustics play a significant role in the physical projection of sound energy and the ability of listeners to localize it. Second, humans react very differently to spatialized sound depending on their head and ear shape. Even though the eardrums produce the most significant acoustical input signals for the human auditory system, the external parts of the ear also play an important role (Blauert, 289–95). This generally causes a great deal more variation among listeners’ abilities to localize spatial sound events than, say, their ability to determine pitch intervals or relative rhythmic durations under similar circumstances. Third, the localization of space through sound is affected by other musical parameters—for example, space perception can be altered by slight pitch variations mimicking the Doppler effect.5 This means that if music perception is to play a role in analysis, several musical parameters must be taken into consideration, making the task more complex.6 Finally, there are few if any existing historical methods or traditions that can help us to approach spatialization in an informed way.7 There is not even a generally accepted way of measuring either real or apparent movement in spatial music—instead, it is usually written about in terms of the setup of loudspeakers, or the arrangement of musicians in a perfor-mance space.8 An analogous situation in the pitch world might be somewhat akin to having only a sense of melodic contour, without the ability to reference the specific pitches involved. Despite these challenges, it has become more and more difficult to ignore the spatial aspect of much contemporary music. Composers like Xenakis, Stockhausen, and many others have created complex and intricate spatial structures in their music which warrant investigation at a detailed level of analysis. Compositional work has gone on both in instrumental and electronic spatialization at places ranging from large laboratories like IRCAM, to suburban homes where teenagers’ off-theshelf desktop computers run software such as MAX/MSP or 344 Perspectives of New Music Supercollider. Like many other analytical projects, investigating the structures present in spatial music can verify claims that a composer made, suggest ways of listening so that a work’s more subtle aspects can be appreciated, and perhaps even inspire composers to find new ways of composing in space. Roger Reynolds wrote in the pages of this journal over thirty years ago that “The equipment and much of the perceptual information that would allow an orderly examination of the geometry of sound already exists; what is lacking is informed strategy” (Reynolds 1978, 183). Following Reynolds’ suggestion, I will develop an informed strategy for examining the geometry of sound in a spectacular work of spatial music—Stockhausen’s Lichter—Wasser (1999–2000). In Lichter— Wasser...