Music, Mountains and Geological Time
- Submitting institution
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University for the Creative Arts
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Whalley, H. 2019. MMGT
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- T – Other; multi-component output comprising musical compositions, poetry, and a sound walk
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2019
- 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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4 - Audio Research Cluster
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘Music, Mountains and Geological Time’ is an output that contains 5 components (musical compositions and poetry) which collectively respond to geological process and geological time.
The first component, ‘Seven Rocks’ is a musical counterpart to the poem of the same title written by Norman Nicholson, and, like Nicholson’s poem, responds to the landscapes and deep time of Cumbia. This work led to a residential fellowship at the Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada where Whalley developed these ideas further, resulting in the poem ‘Water Over Time’, published in Comet and then used as the basis of a commission for solo cello entitled ‘This Fragile Expanse’. Like ‘Seven Rocks’, ‘This Fragile Expanse’ combined music and text within performance. ‘Strange Cathedrals’ is a major work for orchestra that combines and builds upon the methods developed over the course of this research, relating to the proportions of geological time scales. ‘Slower Still’ is an electronically manipulated and time-stretched recording of ‘Strange Cathedrals’ that engages with the listener by inviting them to listen to the proportions of sound as they unfold over the course of four hours, mapped to a geological walk.
The investigation started with a translation of geological process into music-theoretical process. It was progressed through a ‘poetics of description’ which worked through greater levels of abstraction (proportion), and finally returned the artwork to the landscape where it started by mapping a musical form onto geological form.
The portfolio of supporting information provides further explanation of research methods, processes and insights, and a range of relevant visual material. The research is presented as musical scores (with the text of the poem) and sound recordings of the performed pieces.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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