SPACE AND SPACING IN MUSIC
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Abstract
NALOGIES between the arts are always dangerous and have not infrequently led to a complete misunderstanding of that which they have been intended to explain. Because music has never developed an independent vocabulary, however, interchanging its few individual words with those relating to other arts and sciences, such analogies in its case have been unavoidable. There are conditions in the art of music which can be described in no other terms than those which, strictly applied, relate to other matters, and some of them to matters which have no direct or exclusive reference to either art or science or to the two. And one of the most common of these is the term SPACE. "Chaque sens," says Racine, "a son champ qui lui est propre: le champ de la musique est le temps, celui de la peinture est l'espace." This may be literally true, but it does not prevent the intercourse between the two arts by means of an occasional or even frequent visit of the one to the field of the other, and still less does it prevent a comparison of the effects of one with the other in terms which strictly refer only to the one. Like Light, Shade, Colour, Outline, Form, the term Space is one that is commonly used to describe certain characteristics in music. Yet although, and possibly because, it is one of the most common it is one that is very frequently misunderstood and misapplied. We often speak of a spacious musical work, or refer to the way in which a composer has used his spaces; and still more often do we refer to a spacious manner of interpretation and performance. (Humorists have here an undeniable opportunity which few of them seize, of taking advantage of the physical attributes and motions of conductors and executants!) And how many who use the term really know exactly what they mean by it, or do even so many convey even the slightest definite meaning by their use of the term?