Sonorous Hauntings. Two works commissioned by RLPO and Ensemble 10/10 2017-18.
- Submitting institution
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Liverpool Hope University
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- SDM22C
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- June
- Year
- 2017
- 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
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- Additional information
- comprises two compositions commissioned by the RLPOs new music group, Ensemble 10/10: Unlucky for Some conducted by Peter Davison; featuring the voice of Aniko Toth; Beyond Twilight - which includes acousmatic media - conducted by Clark Rundell. The syntax of each work’s vocal and instrumental textures is largely wrought from the output of generative Markovian algorithms programmed in OpusModus; designed after in-depth analyses of a variety of historical musical grammars, thus engaging with the ideas of multiplicity and hauntology
Unlucky for Some was composed to mark the 50th anniversary of seminal publications by the Liverpool poet Roger McGough in 2017. I set two poems from his cycle Unlucky for Some – short, harrowing, neo-verbatim texts from real-life women experiencing hard times. I chose The Beatles’ All You Need Is Love as an appropriate musical text to serve the poems as well as celebrating 1967; its structure fed my generative Markovian algorithms.
Beyond Twilight was composed to mark the centenary of Latvian independence in 2018. I visited the Estonian Music Information Centre in Tallinn to analyse the original score of Heino Eller’s Tone Poem Videvik (Twilight) – a luminescent work expressing hope for Estonia’s approaching independence after the catastrophes of WW1. I visited the Arvo Pärt archive to research aspects of his tintinnabulation techniques. Simultaneously - for reasons of personal loss - I was researching an ancient English folk song that had become deeply associated with Arsenal Football Club - She Wore A Yellow Ribbon. Numerous field recordings of the Baltic Sea and Arsenal football fans were the source of the acousmatic dimension of the work. Extensive motific, harmonic, and spectral analyses fed into my generative Markovian algorithms.
Each work received further performances in a portrait concert at the Edison Denisov Contemporary Music Festival, Tomsk, Russia November 2018.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
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- English abstract
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