In the early Christian tradition, the term antiphon was used to denote a sung response to a psalm during a religious service, and this gave rise to the antiphonal style of singing which was widely used in medieval church music. The polyphonic choral music of the sixteenth century and the Renaissance retained this older technique, often using a smaller capella choir in conjunction with the main ripieno choir. The popularization of this technique is generally attributed to the Venetian School founded by the Flemish composer Adrian Willaert, who became maestro di cappella of St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice in 1527 (see Figure 7.1). The existing use of alternating choirs was facilitated here by the unique interior of the Cathedral of St. Marks which contains two spatially separated organs and choir lofts. Composers began to take advantage of the increased distance between the groups and use the spatial separation as a special effect. Bryant points out however that it cannot be assumed that the spatial separation of the choirs, or cori spezzati, was an integral part of early music of the Venetian School. The historical records suggest that this was instead an alternative arrangement which was occasionally used as a special effect based on the preference of a performance’s music director or special guest [Bryant, 1981]. Indeed, as antiphonal music is largely based on successive, often contrasting phrases which alternate between the two choirs, a greater spatial separation is not, strictly speaking, necessary, as the separation is inherent to the musical material. Willaert’s eight-part Vespers, composed in 1550 is one of the earliest examples of this music and features the echo and dialogue effects between the two spatially separated groups which are typical of this aesthetic.
By the early seventeenth century the music of the Venetian school of
composers had developed beyond this strict ritual alternation between two choirs to a rapid, more sophisticated dialogue between multiple choirs and instrumental groups. Students of Willaert’s such as Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli composed large scale works for multiple groups and choirs and were also the earliest composers to include dynamic markings and specific instrumentation in the score. Bryant suggests that the larger choir would have remained at floor level as they had other ceremonial duties during the mass [Bryant, 1981]. The instrumental groups, who had no active role in the ceremony, would have been placed in an inconspicuous position, most likely in
been situated at some other point away from the main choir. This theory is supported by historical accounts from the time, one of which details the method of
synchronizing the various spatially distributed groups. It appears that two additional conductors were employed to relay the beat indicated by the principal conductor, situated at floor level with the main choir, to the musicians in each organ loft.
Giovanni Gabrielli's famous work In Ecclesiis is an excellent example of this form of polychoral music, using four separate groups of instrumental and singing performers accompanied by organ and basso continuo to create a spatial dialogue and echo effects (see score extract in Figure 7.2).
Fig. 7.2 Echo effects in Giovanni Gabrielli's In Ecclesiis
The Venetian school was highly influential across Europe, helped in part no doubt by the invention of the printing press a century before. The English composer Thomas Tallis composed Spem in Alium in 1573 for forty separate vocal parts arranged in eight choirs while Orazio Benevoli’s Festal Mass was written for fifty- three parts, two organs and basso continuo. Over the next four hundred years, the use of antiphony became rarer with some notable exceptions such as the antiphonal choral effects of J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (1729), and the motivic interplay of spatially separated groups of Mozart’s Serenade in D for four Orchestras (1777). In the Romantic era, composers occasionally placed groups of musicians away from the main orchestra for dramatic effect. One example is Berlioz’s Requiem (1837), which
at its premiere included four brass ensembles positioned at the four cardinal points, along with a massive orchestra of singers, woodwinds, horns, strings, and percussion. Berlioz was aware in advance that this work would be premiered in Les Invalides, the gigantic domed cathedral of the military hospital in Paris, and he exploited the
characteristics of this space in this new commission. In the famous Tuba Mirum section, the invocation of God’s fury with the damned is invoked through the
consecutive entrance of the four brass ensembles which gradually builds to a dramatic climax of massed timpani and voices (see Figure 7.3). 1
Fig. 7.3 Tuba Mirum section in Berlioz’s Requiem
Although Berlioz was clearly thinking about the use of space in music (he referred to it as “architectural music”), the spatial distribution of the performers in this case is largely for dramatic effect and is not a critical feature of the work, and this is true of most of the historical examples discussed in this Section. In the early part of the twentieth century, space was sometimes used to create a sense of perspective by contrasting the orchestra on stage with more instruments placed at a distance off-
1 Interestingly, during the first performance, the conductor Habeneck (a rival of Berlioz) is alleged to
stage. The Austrian composer Gustav Mahler often used off-stage musicians in addition to the main orchestra, such as, for example, the brass and percussion in the fifth movement of Symphony No. 2 (1894) or the off-stage snare drum in Symphony No. 3 (1896). Other significant composers of the era also used similar effects, although not as frequently as Mahler. Igor Stravinsky made use of tubas dans le couline (in the corridor – i.e. in the wings) in the ballet score of Firebird (1910) and Strauss featured six trombones auf dem Theater in Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919). This period was one of great upheaval in Western Art music as many composers begin to move away from the strict functional tonality and defined meters of previous eras. While composers like Stravinsky and later Schoenberg experimented with the basic foundations of musical structure, others retained aspects of traditional music practice but utilized them in a very different way. The American Charles Ives is one such composer who regularly combined traditional tonality with the then new ideas of musical quotation, polyrhythms and meters, and spatial effects. Ives was a
contemporary of Mahler (both produced most of their music within the same thirty year period from 1888 to 1918) and although their music is quiet disparate, and derived from very different musical traditions, both composers do exhibit certain similarities [Morgan, 1978]. For example, both composers were interested in the quotation of other musical material within their own compositions and both regularly combined and juxtaposed layers of different and contrasting material. Both
composers also retained aspects of functional tonality in their work and made extensive use of overlapping yet unrelated tempi. While both composers used the spatial distribution of performers in their work, it would be Ives who developed this practice further and have the most lasting effect on the development of spatial music, particularly in America.