'Shadow Walker' double concerto for two violins and orchestra, duration c.25 minutes.
- Submitting institution
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Royal College of Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 47
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2017
- URL
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https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Mark-Anthony-Turnage-Shadow-Walker/102624
- 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
- -
- 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 transformation of a visual image or event into music can often be crudely anecdotal or clunkily onomatopoeic. When an image moves me, as it did with Mark Wallinger’s, ‘Shadow Walker’, I have sought instead to use my interpretation of the art-work to generate structural means that I could then transfer over and use to build musical statement. Wallinger’s video installation shows only the artist’s shadow as it moves over the detritus of a central London street. The two soloists in this double concerto ‘shadow’ each other in that the individual player is ‘greyed out’ in the intricacy and interplay of their material. It also allowed me to re-think the relationship with the orchestra as this blurring of identity pulses between the soloists (as both duo and individual) and groupings within the orchestra. I have written double concertos before, for two trumpets (Dispelling the Fears) and for violin and cello (Dialogue) and relished the ‘super-soloist’ that the duo became. Shadow Walker provided me with both a more subtle and complex approach: a lyricism in the smearing out of individual identity rather than just its doubling up. Cultural dissonance also continues to be an important force for me, the exuberance that can result as one works with ideas that clash rather than easily interact. Meeting members of the Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra in workshops (my habitual working method) opened up to me their personal histories, and I was impressed with their lack of cynicism and the freshness with which they approached their playing. The percussionists in particular freely crossed all kinds of musical cultural boundaries, demonstrating traditional instruments to me. I very cautiously bought some of them into the piece – they are intentionally almost barely audible – in the shadows, perhaps, like much else in modern Turkish life.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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