In a similar manner to how performativity can be used as a compositional device by the composer in the creation of a piece, informing the final result of the music composition, so can space. A pioneering example would be the use of projections of colours by the Russian composer Scriabin in his tone poem Prometheus: Poem of Fire (1910) to accompany the music, showcasing the composer’s associations of colour with music[34]. In this case, the instrument producing the colour projections, a keyboard designed originally for the piece (Tastiéra per Luce), changes the space of the symphony hall, and impacts the audience’s response to the music.
The influence of ideas and practices from different artistic disciplines, such as site-specific theatre and installations or performance art, has also impacted music composition in this sense. In fact, this cross-disciplinary approach with the engagement with space in mind is even now demanded from publicly funded institutions. A clear example is Arts Council of England CEO’s words, giving “opera in car parks, opera in pubs", or "opera on your tablet” as examples for the Arts Council of England “to be focused on the future of opera”[35].
The use of a determined space and the strategic design of the compositional material to engage with it can enhance the communication of the subject matter of a piece. This can be seen clearly again in Wolters and Clancy’s work Amaechi about the eponymous basketball player, performed in a basketball court during the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham; or in Brian Irvine’s street art operas The Scorched Earth Trilogy (2022), mixing and engaging with both the digital and the street art worlds by projecting operatic films designed to act as murals, or Things We Throw Away (2014), performed in different locations, capturing “forgotten ‘thrown away’ moments from the streets of Dublin”[36]. I also engaged with this practice in my 2019 beer opera, Besse, created in collaboration with the (now closed) craft brewery Digbrew Co., and performed engaging with the taproom and its particularities (fermenting tanks, mashers, boilers, or taps) as a performance space.
The four pieces in the portfolio were created having some spatial conditions or specificities in mind. TRAPPIST-1 is designed to be performed in a space defined by the surround electronics, as the piece relies on the interaction of the flautist with the sonic location of the sounds associated with the different planets. In the case of Autohoodening: The Rise of Captain Swing, the creation of the piece was influenced by the virtual space[37], but it was still designed to be a piece of street theatre, engaging with its original masquerading source[38]. In this case, the composition in layers and the freedom given to the folk band to interact and respond musically to the action embed the piece with the necessary flexibility to perform in the street and to engage with the improvisatory nature of the winter masquerades[39].
In this section, I will focus on the engagement with the space in the other two pieces: Linear Construction in Space No. 1 and The Flowering Desert.