Richard Vella    composer

i) phenomena and metaphors that we interpret to having a spiritual quality;  and

​

ii) the techniques used by musicians to evoke that spiritual phenomenon or metaphor.

​

Relationships between language, words and music have a rich history going back to medieval times and, no doubt, even earlier. One approach used in Music, Spirit and the Space Between is music and rhetoric used by composers in the 16th and 17th centuries where various musical tropes were associated with rhetorical figures of persuasion and formal argument. Affektenlehre, the representation of affects or passions, from the Baroque era is another example of this approach. Both these were gradually  superseded by more rigorous approaches to music theory. However, the linking of musical tropes to specific emotions or concepts has never gone away as can be heard in 19th century program music, many film music scores and opera. Similarly in Music, Spirit and the Space Between, rhetorical tropes are used such as ascending scales in 'Flight'. While these rhetorical techniques are still used in various movements of Music, Spirit and the Space Between, other more abstract rhetorical devices are used such as analogy, parody and metaphor. For example, the title of a movement may relate to the listener's experience or conceptual understanding of that whole movement. The title forms a type of ellipsis in which the listener's experience bridges the gap between the title and the music thereby creating a sense of meaningfulness.