Abstract
Through seven musical compositions I seek to interpret a given set of harmonic and temporal resources – a cycle of harmonic fields and a chain of numerical sequences – in several competing ways. Each composition explores interactions among incongruous approaches. In order to create vibrant polyphony I borrowed rhythmic and melodic shapes from music of many cultures and eras. Over the course of the portfolio, the gestural language becomes bolder and the polyphony more highly differentiated.
TAUTOLOGY, for five players, evolves two streams in tandem, which finally influence one another in the piece’s conclusion. THAT, for fifteen players, adopts technical and expressive features of Korean court music (kagok), and reshapes them to suit its instrumental and cultural context. The heterophonic layers of kagok become polyphonic in THAT via harmonic differentiation. Extraneous musical objects and noises intermittently interrupt this polyphony, which gradually absorbs them.
In PICTURES OF FACTS, for horn and ensemble, pre-existing music ranging from Giacinto Scelsi compositions to kagok to Mozart provided models for eight distinct musical streams. I sought to create an exuberant panoply of voices by giving each stream a different profile with respect to pitch contour, register, instrumentation, volume, periodicity, tempo, and pace of change. Speaking, vocalising, noises, mime, and piano preparation, intensify disparity in PARADIGMS, which forms a kind of palinode, each piece in a chain of ten rejecting its antecedent.
The instrumental line-up of PIETY, for female voice and ensemble, offers a wide range of cultural connotations to match the range of my musical sources. QUARTET MORE & MORE, for string quartet, is a radical transcription of part of Johannes Ockeghem’s late 15th-century mass, Missa ‘De Plus en Plus’, substituting new pitches and rhythms yet preserving the original’s unusual mixture of tutti and virtuosic reduced-voice sections. Finally, in TO EACH THEIR OWN..., for orchestra, a polyphony of characters hits a dead end, with the radical independence of elements culminating in annihilation.
TAUTOLOGY, for five players, evolves two streams in tandem, which finally influence one another in the piece’s conclusion. THAT, for fifteen players, adopts technical and expressive features of Korean court music (kagok), and reshapes them to suit its instrumental and cultural context. The heterophonic layers of kagok become polyphonic in THAT via harmonic differentiation. Extraneous musical objects and noises intermittently interrupt this polyphony, which gradually absorbs them.
In PICTURES OF FACTS, for horn and ensemble, pre-existing music ranging from Giacinto Scelsi compositions to kagok to Mozart provided models for eight distinct musical streams. I sought to create an exuberant panoply of voices by giving each stream a different profile with respect to pitch contour, register, instrumentation, volume, periodicity, tempo, and pace of change. Speaking, vocalising, noises, mime, and piano preparation, intensify disparity in PARADIGMS, which forms a kind of palinode, each piece in a chain of ten rejecting its antecedent.
The instrumental line-up of PIETY, for female voice and ensemble, offers a wide range of cultural connotations to match the range of my musical sources. QUARTET MORE & MORE, for string quartet, is a radical transcription of part of Johannes Ockeghem’s late 15th-century mass, Missa ‘De Plus en Plus’, substituting new pitches and rhythms yet preserving the original’s unusual mixture of tutti and virtuosic reduced-voice sections. Finally, in TO EACH THEIR OWN..., for orchestra, a polyphony of characters hits a dead end, with the radical independence of elements culminating in annihilation.
| Original language | English |
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| Qualification | Doctor of Philosophy |
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| Award date | 1 Apr 2011 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Apr 2011 |