The Awareness of Space in the Experience of Listening An Introduction Eva Esteve Roldán, John Griffiths, Francisco Rodilla León Throughout history, musicological curiosity has led to the exploration of research fields that have expanded the possibilities of music listening. The pri- ority of pioneering researchers and musicians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was to recover the many scores and musical instruments that had fallen into oblivion and to rediscover forgotten performance practices. Their discoveries gave rise to continuing initiatives for the promotion and recreation of forgotten repertories, awakening a growing public appetite for historically informed performances. The union of these academic and practical initiatives added new sensory experience to a society interested in listening to music of the past in the way it was originally created and heard. Evidence of the success of the enterprise was not only the great interest shown by audiences in both concert halls but also the creation of a multi-million dollar recording industry. In recent decades, scholars have become increasingly aware of the continuing development of these performance practices that have resulted from the redis- covery of previously unknown sources, and also through the development of new fields and methodologies of research1. Two of the most interesting approaches of recent academic trends, because of their interrelationship, their practical application, and their evocative potential, are the exploration of the physical environment in which these recovered repertoires were once performed, and the way they may have affected the perceptions of the listeners who bore witness to them. The differ- ence found by contemporary audiences when comparing the listening experi- ence in modern concert halls with performances in old buildings for which the music was originally conceived is one of the contemporary realities that has promoted this area of study to flourish. The current interest in the spa- tial context is not limited to identifying the specific places where musical per- formance took place –cathedrals, monasteries, palaces– but extends to their topography, acoustic conditions, the sensory experience of the spectator, and 1 An extraordinarily analytical view on the subject is Leech-Wilkinson, 2002. Eva Esteve Roldán, John Griffiths, and Francisco José Rodilla León - 9783846769133 Downloaded from Brill.com 11/04/2024 10:25:41PM via free access