Symphony No 3 : Illumination
- Submitting institution
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University of Aberdeen
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 140999233
- 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
- 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
- Symphony No 3 extends and develops into new areas much of the research work started in my previous two symphonies. In fact, it is a summing up, an apotheosis of the previous works and forms the dialectical synthesis of the series (the three symphonies may be performed together, in order, as one large work). The preoccupation of the series – a reimagining of the sonata form – presented here in terms of the Hegelian Dialectic – comes to its fruition in this symphony: the linear and vertical presentation of completely differing musical expressions (one romantic, rhetorical and lyrical and the other experimental in terms of harmony, temporally freer, rhythmically freer and much, much slower moving) side by side and, as the work progresses, layering horizontally and increasingly stratifying this material too. Opposites of dramatic, rhythmical and temporal parameters, not just harmonic and gestural parameters as in traditional sonata form, propel change, development (for want of a better word) and synthesis.
Scordatura or, more precisely in this case, detuning percussion, use of glissandi, portamento and melisma are also important in this symphony as they allow, for the first time, an exploration of the dialectic with regards to harmony and timbre.
For me, the realisation of a totally blended form which is both monolithic (static) and moving (narrative) only fully and really comes to fruition at the end of this symphony and, only when listening to all three symphonies as one, large work, can the essence of this extended form be completely understood. The final bars of the work are, in many ways a fractal summing up of the whole series – one long, unmoving chord which is orchestrated fluidly against an ever-moving, constantly changing rhythmical energy: music which is rhythmically and dramatically in transition but which harmonically has never moved.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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