# The physical placement of the musician(s) and the audience



## Guest (Aug 24, 2018)

A piece I am currently working on for a performance next month is for a choir that is hidden in plain sight The choir is placed in amongst the audience, facing a stage where no music is being played at all. It's called _Auditorium_ because the sound and the experience of the sound is completely from within the auditorium itself. Depending on where one chooses to sit in the audience, the sound of the choir (singly mostly vocalisations with reference to register rather than specific pitch) would be quite unique.

I find that music that changes the physical placement of the sound reception from the audience and the sound production from musicians our loudspeakers to be really fascinating.

One famous and well loved piece is _Répons_ by Boulez:






To me, the whole aspect of being surrounded by the sound from all angles is a great way to ensure a different experience for different members of the audience, not just subjectively, but objectively in terms of how far or close they are to different sounds at different points in time.

Something else I particularly love is playing music with friends, where the relationship between audience and musician is completely dissolved and the experience of the music is determined by musicians _as_ the audience. Playing for friends in the setting of a living room also creates a sense of music being something communal, a part of a living culture rather than an artifact of history.

Orchestral concerts, on the other hand, give me the sense of participating in a cult or some kind of ritual in observing musical artifacts of history. When I am in the audience, there is a clear divide between my role as a participant and the orchestra's role. When I am on stage being conducted by Andrew Davis or someone like that, I can really feel the reversal of roles and the strict etiquette of such ritual.

-----------------------------------

Questions:
In what ways has the physical placement of the audience and musicians in a performance of music changed how music is experienced for you?
What is the merit of each different performance context outlined in this post, or other contexts that you can think of?

Looking forward to your responses. :tiphat:


----------



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Anytime I've been to a performance (musical or theatrical) where perrformers either march down the aisles or are positioned in the audience, I spend to much time craning around to see who's doing what to actually enjoy what's happening.


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I don't get out to see live music very often these days. My rural position makes it difficult and expensive. So music comes to me mostly through recordings. I don't have surround sound or anything like that. I can remember a few concerts where music that I knew quite well took on a new dimension because some of the players were off stage. I loved the music before I heard that (so the off-stage effect was not essential to me) but it was good to hear it "as it was supposed to be". The effects that come from positioning performers around the auditorium can work magic but don't transfer that well to simple recordings.


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I agree that there's something artificial and even a little alienating about orchestral concerts. I still like them, but the feeling is there.

There is a long tradition of exploiting the spatial placement of musicians and of audience involvement in western church music, starting with medieval antiphons and going on to elaborate multi-choir masses and German cantatas that incorporate congregational singing. So it's interesting that you invoke the ideas of "cult" and "ritual" to describe the secular orchestral concert, when the strongest contrasting tradition in western classical music comes from actual religious ritual.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I've experienced this a few times. Each time I've come away remembering that someone three seats down from me and behind me started singing or reciting and I have less memory of the actual music. The only way seems to be to close your eyes and just listen to the music, but that then cuts out any of the visual intentions. It does provide a different aural experience, but not one I would like too often.


----------



## Ras (Oct 6, 2017)

One of my greatest concert experiences was hearing *Gabrieli*'s music performed in a big library in Copenhagen which has balconies like the Basilica Church in Venice for which Gabrieli composed his music.

I've always loved *Carl Nielsen's Third Symphony "Espansiva"* - and my favorite part is when the hidden singers enter (a soprano and a baryton) in the second movement "Andante Pastorale".

(On a side note: my worst experience with something like this is the recording of Haydn's surprise symphony where a woman is screaming instead of the usual tutti surprise). (I think it was Marc Minkowski on Naive?)


----------



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Then there's the Tuba Mirum of the Berlioz Requiem, which is always misinterpreted. Berlioz directs that the four brass bands which sound the Last Trump ( if only ), be placed at the four corners of the orchestra (it premiered, I believe in the middle of Les Invalides under the woeful direction of Habeneck). Conductor after conductor since has placed them all over the hall, and gotten into all sorts of trouble with the speed of sound.


----------



## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

In a church I went to before, the organ and soloist (who is also the organist) is on a mezzanine level behind the audience (or the church members) while the choir is in front. It makes an interesting effect, as if the organ is your subconscious, or the Holy Spirit, while you are looking at the choir in front.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I think the first time I became aware of unusual placement of musicians was when my daughter played Mahler's first. Trumpets play offstage before entering the stage and sitting with the orchestra. The was a traveling exhibit where 40 speakers were arranged in an oval with each speaker pointing toward the center and playing a single voice from Tallis' Spem in alium. People could walk inside or around the oval listening to the voices all about them. I would love to have the opportunity to hear such an exhibit someday. I imagine the effect would be rather different than hearing a recording. Similarly the orchestra in Stockhausen's Gruppen is arranged in three subsets around the audience. I've heard, as expected, that the experience is rather different from a recording.

It's true that being surrounded by the sound probably lessens the ability to focus visually on performers, but I think the aural experience could often be superior.


----------

