Notions of Queerness as Compositional Building Blocks in “There are more of them than us – A Queer Concerto for 9 Saxophones and Orchestra
- Submitting institution
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Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 33Z_OP_J0067
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
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- Year
- 2020
- URL
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https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/915432/1082627
- 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
- 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
- No
- Additional information
- _Notions of Queerness as Compositional Building Blocks in ‘There Are More Of Them Than Us – A Queer Concerto for 9 Saxophones and Orchestra’_ by Michael Wolters is a Research Catalogue exposition that documents a research project exploring queerness as compositional and performative process. The exposition presents the full score, high-quality video of the first performance (2018) and a commentary on the research process.
It is rare that a piece of music in a traditional classical music context openly addresses queerness in its title and is built on aspects of queerness (one other example is Julius Eastman’s _Gay Guerilla_). In Queer Music, queer aspects are often found in the lyrics and visual performance aspects. Sonic elements tend not to be noticeably queer but are instead borrowed from generic, often popular music genres. While Wolters’s _Queer Concerto_ also uses visual aspects, he goes further to explore how notions of queerness can be fundamental building blocks of a piece of music. A traditional concert in a traditional concert hall offers an occasion full of rituals and norms. Counterintuitively, this is an ideal setting for this work, as those norms draw attention to the sense of the situation being queered, amplifying the subversion of traditional expression inherent in the music. The work is composed taking the performance situation into consideration, so that the theme communicates on a sonic level as well as visual and performative levels.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
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- English abstract
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