Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter explores the sense of depth as a feature of orchestral music, a topic of importance to the practice and study of orchestration. Fundamental concepts and terminology that underpin orchestral analyses evoke spatial experience, such as auditory scene analysis, sequential grouping, blend, and segregation. Depth, in particular, is implicit in the notion of stratification—the perceived division of texture into foreground, middleground, and background layers. Drawing from phenomenological, perceptual, and analytical approaches, depth is presented as both an elemental and a formative spatial illusion. Using examples from the Vorspiel of Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, the chapter demonstrates how orchestration engenders a vivid sense of depth that not only shapes the immediate textural experience of the music but also extends temporally to serve depictive and formal functions.</jats:p>