research: Seminar
Spatialization of Sound
Markus Ophälders
The phenomenon of sound is always located in a space and it creates space, sound spaces, which may be more or less perceivable: one is the situation in a concert hall, another one is that of a supermarket with some kind of music playing in the background. During my talk I will consider one of the most recent phenomena, a concert of four string quartets which has taken place in the Hangar Bicocca, a place which on its own is already extraordinary. I then will try to construct a sort of historical phenomenology of spatialization of sound, beginning with Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, two Venetian composers of the 16th century, who introduced the “cori battenti”, two contraposed choruses, in order to create a new space by using sound. The next step will be the analysis of the disposition of the musicians practiced by Bach before proceeding onto the composition of the modern symphony orchestra also used in the case of melodramas. This gives way to the changes Wagner introduced at Bayreuth and then to the phenomena of new music: Gruppen by Karlheinz Stockhausen with three orchestras, Salvatore Sciarrino and his composition for Brunelleschi in the cupola of the Dome of Florence and, at the end, Prometeo by Luigi Nono, a composition for which Enzo Piano created an Arch with mobile elements in order to create different spaces of sound.
Biography
Markus Ophälders
Markus Ophälders was born in the U.S.A from German parentage. He has studied Philosophy, Psychology and German Literature in Berlin, Milan and Bologna and since 2011, after teaching Aesthetics at the University of Milan, he teaches Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art and Music at the University of Verona, where he also coordinates the Research Centre ORFEO - Sound Image Writing.
His studies focus mainly on problems of aesthetic theory, philosophy of history and politics as well as philosophy of music and theories of experience in the German philosophical reflection of the nineteenth and twentieth century. One of the central issues concerns cultural studies and the changes in the structural and cultural aspects of society in the current conditions of power, masses, technology, alienation and reification.
He has published numerous essays dedicated to Romanticism and German Idealism as well as to the Frankfurt School and to specific problems in modern and contemporary literature and music.
Selected publications:
Romantische Ironie, Würzburg 2004
Labirinti, Milano 2008
Auswege sind Umwege, Würzburg 2012
Konstruktion von Erfahrung. Versuch über Walter Benjamin, Nordhausen 2015
Dialettica dell’ironia romantica, Milano 2016.
research: seminar
Spatialization of Sound
Markus Ophälders
The phenomenon of sound is always located in a space and it creates space, sound spaces, which may be more or less perceivable: one is the situation in a concert hall, another one is that of a supermarket with some kind of music playing in the background. During my talk I will consider one of the most recent phenomena, a concert of four string quartets which has taken place in the Hangar Bicocca, a place which on its own is already extraordinary. I then will try to construct a sort of historical phenomenology of spatialization of sound, beginning with Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, two Venetian composers of the 16th century, who introduced the “cori battenti”, two contraposed choruses, in order to create a new space by using sound. The next step will be the analysis of the disposition of the musicians practiced by Bach before proceeding onto the composition of the modern symphony orchestra also used in the case of melodramas. This gives way to the changes Wagner introduced at Bayreuth and then to the phenomena of new music: Gruppen by Karlheinz Stockhausen with three orchestras, Salvatore Sciarrino and his composition for Brunelleschi in the cupola of the Dome of Florence and, at the end, Prometeo by Luigi Nono, a composition for which Enzo Piano created an Arch with mobile elements in order to create different spaces of sound.