Music and Space

In hearing music it is not necessary to seek information about the causes of the sounds, nor do we have to identify a referent or referents, sound is employed largely in a way which opens up spatiality which does not depend on the discrete location and mutual exclusion of entities . . . This opens up a space which is not that of discrete location, but for want of a better word, the space of ‘omni-presence’. And when more than one sound is present, occupying the same space while remaining audibly distinct, we may speak of a space not of mutual exclusion but of ‘interpenetration’. Sounds do not have to ‘cut each other off’ or obscure each other, in the manner of visually perceived objects. The tones of a chord can be heard sounding through each other” (Begbie, Theology, Music and Time, 24)