of gold and shadows : Volume 2
- Submitting institution
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King's College London
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 103897787
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- November
- Year
- 2018
- 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
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- Criminology
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- Interdisciplinary
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- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
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- Reserve for an output with double weighting
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- Additional information
- This volume (Composers Edition 6/11/2018) forms the second half of a cycle of eight compositions concerned with modes of continuity evocative of ‘states of heightened awareness’. It is rooted in a re-thinking of Schoenberg’s seminal post-1908 music.
In preparatory analysis, I observed that the key to the intensely eroticised expressivity of many of Schoenberg's works is a sense of distortion of classical patterns-of-expectation and balanced closure. In this cycle I have particularly explored ‘juxtaposition’ and ‘overlapping of phrases’, in conjunction with ‘reversals and displacements of classical hierarchies’ for expressive purposes – all categories alluded to by Schoenberg, seemingly borrowing from Freudian ‘dream-work’ [Schoenberg, 1948]. For instance, extensive ‘juxtaposition’ characterises 'shan shui', while ‘in a bowl’ features ‘overlapping thematic lines’ emerging out of all-pervasive pedals.
Contrary to the tendency in the aftermath of serialism for music to be driven by the possibilities of texture and timbre, I have devised ways of creating directed motion and stasis by means of the unfolding of the ambiguities of quasi-‘tonal’ and/or ‘modal’ polyphonic complexes involving shifting pitch hierarchies. These ‘complexes’ project local hierarchies through pitch centricity and quasi-‘tonal’ allusions (akin to those I have described in Schoenberg [Milstein, 1992]) that contribute to the dream-like eroticism. Furthermore, the cycle strives for a synthesis of the type of the motion-directed note-against-note polyphony prominent in Goehr’s recent music, and an adaptation of the layering devices in Birtwistle. For instance, while the opening of ‘fretted’ (bb. 1-19) articulates a single layer, polyphonic strands can be combined resulting in multi-layered textures, as in the ending of a ‘in a bowl’ (fig 50 to the end).
The whole cycle is unified by both imagery and overlapping instrumentation. The prevalence of pairs of instruments and the use of harp and piano is concomitant with the focus on two- and three- part polyphony.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
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- English abstract
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