The Metaphor of Movement and Its Materialisation in the Spatial Music of the 20th Century

The article concerns the issue of experiencing spatial music. While discussing movement and space in music, Bohdan Pociej draws attention to two types of the spatiality of a musical work: the “inner” and “outer” spatiality. The first one comes from the nature of the sound material and the interaction of elements, it stays in the sphere of impressions, metaphors. The second one involves the physical parameters and the actual performance of the piece. The author notes that the works of composers of the 20th century 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 – concerning language and music – has become the subject of cognitive science. In the context of spatial music, the metaphorical level is combined with the physical level. During the performance of a composition, the listener may be have various relations with sound sources but always locates them concerning the location of their own body, which they treat as the centre. The two basic types of outer spatiality – the perspective of the observer and the perspective of the participant – correspond to the types of understanding of the metaphor of movement in music (internal spatiality) proposed by Steve Larson and Mark Johnson.