ABSTRACT

In Ingmar Bergman’s comments on his version of The Magic Flute, he stressed the magic-box qualities of the theatre and the liveliness of the singers, but not a word on atmosphere is to be found. Even if the magic-box quality of old machinery has its charm, Bergman seems to have been looking for something that has to do with character and atmosphere: the theatre in toto. An atmosphere can sometimes be present, and disappear and be replaced by another. Gernot Bohme, in many of his writings on atmosphere, has pointed out that behind theatres, bars, restaurants, advertising and malls, there is almost always a very conscious production of atmospheres. The Drottningholm theatre is a producer of atmospheres in a more pronounced way than might be expected: it is less a solid building than an artifice made for the production of atmospheres. The chapter explores atmosphere in music has to do with the phenomenon of musical spatiality in a double sense.