The Sound of an Endless Column

Abstract

Zohar Eitan and Hila Tamir-Ostrover start their chapter with a survey of existing empirical studies of sound-space mappings—in particular, pitch/spatial height associations. Using Ligeti’s Endless Column as a case, they exemplify how music might challenge these mappings by pointing out contradictions in the associative link between the auditory dimension and spatial and motion features. These contradictions, the authors argue, on the one hand can illustrate novel opportunities for composers to use music-space correspondences to create paradoxical spaces while, on the other hand, could demonstrate how the music-space correspondence revealed by empirical research could be used in the analysis of music.