Sound Scripts
Site in Sound: A Review of Four Musical Works that Integrate Site Into Sound
Abstract
Unorthodox performance sites offer the opportunity to provide unique creative input into music composition and performances. Rather than resist the acoustic and design features of performance spaces, these features can become part of compositions and their performance making them site-specific. Is it then possible to success fully integrate the acoustic characteristics of a specific performance site into the early compositional process, and can the performance site be just as integral to the ensemble as musicians are considered to be? Composing music this way proposes a very different creative process to that which composers generally follow when creating music for traditional performance sites. Because of one of the author's own background in jazz and contemporary music, this paper will review four musical works outside of the twentieth century orchestral art music realm. chosen four works each explore site-specificity and the performance site as integral to the compositional process in their own way. The paper will also examine the way these works are linked to their particular performance site through a scale of site-specificity developed by British performance theorist Fiona Wilkie (2003).
Recommended Citation
Francis, M.,
& Hope, C.
(2012).
Site in Sound: A Review of Four Musical Works that Integrate Site Into Sound.
Sound Scripts, 4(1).
Retrieved from
https://ro.ecu.edu.au/soundscripts/vol4/iss1/9
