Taking a Closer Look: The Russian Doll Principle : (Portfolio)
- Submitting institution
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Queen's University of Belfast
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 198708977
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
- London
- Brief description of type
- Edition Peters
- Open access status
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- Month
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- Year
- 2019
- 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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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The works in this portfolio, published by Edition Peters Ltd, plot the course of my ‘Russian Doll’ formal principle, stretching over a series of works of increasing scale from 2016 to 2018.
My large-scale instrumental outputs have explored multi-movement geographies since 1988. This geography of inter-relation has lately evolved into the exploration of re-sized versions of a single musical entity, like a set of Russian Matryoshka Dolls: in this way a multi-movement/multi-section work is also a single musical whole.
Russian Doll for trumpet and piano (2016), premiered by Brant Tilds at Luton’s Bear Club in June 2017, explores this first in a simple, three-part layout. The opening section presents three ideas; the second phase expands these, before the final magnification presents the largest iteration of the family. The persistent research goal is to balance continuing identity with the expanded detail of magnification.
Family Group with Aliens - my third quartet, begun in 2017 – was commissioned by Friction Quartet of San Francisco, and premiered there in August 2019; the ‘family group’ of the title (pieces lasting 0’30”, 2’ and 6’) – unfolds a rapid parade of disparate ideas, explored in three sizings; these three ‘family members’ are interspersed with thematically related interludes, in the manner of my earlier works.
Ground Truthings for quintet (2018), commissioned by Hard Rain Ensemble and premiered in Belfast in February 2019, marks a step forward with the introduction of ‘distance’ to the re-sizing: the three movements are not just larger/smaller iterations, since, in magnification, the raw outlines of materials gain detail - grain and imperfection – just as any object acquires definition as we approach. In fractal terminology, the re-sizings have moved from being scale-bound (merely different in size) to scaling (showing more detail via magnification).
These three works form a chain, expanding this research.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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