Granicus
[Composition / solo multi-percussion and fixed media]
Available in:
Micro-lieux, (2019), CD, Montréal, Québec: Empreintes DIGITALes.
Date and Location of First Performance: 11 March 2016, International Festival of Artistic Innovation (IFAI2016), Leeds (UK)
- Submitting institution
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Leeds Beckett University
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 55
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
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- Year
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Granicus is a composition for solo multi-percussion (crotales, temple blocks, bongos, two congas and concert bass drum) and fixed-media electronics. It develops complex and technically challenging rhythmic structures from traditional rhythmic typologies; extending them rhythmically and timbrally through electronics. This combination of acousmatic material reveals characteristics of aural intimacy with the amplified sounds of untuned percussion.
Granicus uses rhythms from South East Europe and Asia Minor unconventionally, presenting them against each other and treating them using techniques like inversion, time expansion and contraction, substitution and additive processes. The resulting score has been used as the basis for a tape part. A recording of the score has been processed using techniques developed in previous work to create third order gestural surrogacy sound materials which display aural intimacy. These are used here as an extension of the live performance. The result displays the characteristics of “prepared” percussion movement in micro-space with the possibility of fluid/continuous spectromorphological change. Performance gestures are embellished with synthetic materials contrasting the above with remote gestural surrogacy.
Broadcast in seven countries including an appearance on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, Granicus has been performed in major UK festivals (Sounds Like This festival, Leeds; MANTIS festival, Manchester) and Mexico (Mexican Center for Music and Sonic Arts - CMMAS) and has attracted over 5400 plays on YouTube. 27 percussionists from around the UK, Spain, Mexico, Switzerland, USA, Germany, Belgium, and Colombia requested to perform Granicus in concerts, competitions and graduation recitals, identifying a lack of contemporary percussion and electronics repertoire and praising the challenge that Granicus offers. Regarding Granicus, percussionist Sergio Fernandez explains: “...for me, it has made me grow as performer and percussionist and also improve my self-confidence and the way to approach a piece of music that looks near to be impossible to be played”.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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