The article concerns the issue of experiencing spatial music. While discussing movement and space in music, Bohdan Pociej draws attention to two types of spatiality in a music work: the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ spatiality. The former derives from the nature of the sound material and the interaction of elements; it remains in the sphere of impressions and metaphors. The latter involves the physical parameters and actual performance of the piece. I demonstrate that the works of twentieth-century composers tend to break through from the internal space, transforming it into the external one. The issue of the body as a centre is present in the works of Edmund Husserl, Yi-Fu Tuan, Edward Hall, and others. The metaphor of movement in language and music has become the subject of research in cognitive science. In the context of spatial music, the metaphorical level coexists with the physical level. During the performance of a composition, listeners may enter into various relations with sound sources but always locate them with reference to their own bodies, which they treat as the centre. The two basic types of external spatiality – the perspective of the observer and the perspective of the participant – correspond to the two ways of understanding the metaphor of movement in music (internal spatiality) proposed by Steve Larson and Mark Johnson.

The article concerns the issue of experiencing spatial music. While discussing movement and space in music, Bohdan Pociej draws attention to two types of spatiality in a music work: the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ spatiality. The former derives from the nature of the sound material and the interaction of elements; it remains in the sphere of impressions and metaphors. The latter involves the physical parameters and actual performance of the piece. I demonstrate that the works of twentieth-century composers tend to break through from the internal space, transforming it into the external one. The issue of the body as a centre is present in the works of Edmund Husserl, Yi-Fu Tuan, Edward Hall, and others. The metaphor of movement in language and music has become the subject of research in cognitive science. In the context of spatial music, the metaphorical level coexists with the physical level. During the performance of a composition, listeners may enter into various relations with sound sources but always locate them with reference to their own bodies, which they treat as the centre. The two basic types of external spatiality – the perspective of the observer and the perspective of the participant – correspond to the two ways of understanding the metaphor of movement in music (internal spatiality) proposed by Steve Larson and Mark Johnson.