ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a framework for rethinking the ecology of performance and then applies it to two case studies of musical instrumental 'design'. Before approaching the musical performance in particular, it introduces the recent and growing use of ecological psychology as a theoretical construct in relation to music and design. The chapter proposes a theory of musical design that first attends to the structure of musical instruments, then turns to the structures of the wider environment, and examines how these generate and curtail musical creativity. The chapter provides and exemplifies an approach to spaces and sounding movement within those spaces in which these are analysed literally rather than through the metaphorical approach to spaces and gestures best exemplified by the work of Scruton. It argues that paying attention to the ways in which bodies, instruments and spaces interact in the environment should do more than reveal psycho-sociological, acoustic or bio-mechanical issues of importance to musicology.
