Extending from the Inside : Investigating Additive Structures in Three Compositions for Solo Instrumentalist
- Submitting institution
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University of Southampton
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 54372321
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- June
- Year
- 2020
- 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
- These compositions explore additive structures as a method for investigating the intermixing of incongruent musical materials and musical temporalities. Supporting materials include formal diagrams for each work, and the opening of Pärt’s Tabula Rasa, a key reference point for the additive structuring approach. A first research question investigates how highly contrasting materials can co-exist within a piece. Each material has distinctive features (e.g. harmonic or textural profile), with many also having distinguishing idiomatic features (e.g. minor 11th ‘funk’ strummed chords in Extending; Beethovenesque cadential gestures in Sublime). Difference is further accentuated through hard-cuts and rapid alternation (e.g. b.126-139, Turquoise). The works explore how the juxtaposition of unrelated ideas in discrete sections of, normally, increasing length provides clarity, coherence and sense of raison d’etre within a context where conventional means of establishing unity or reconciling difference between incongruent musical ideas (e.g. synthesis) are largely absent. A second research question investigates musical temporality. The early stages of the formal design engenders a high degree of repetition as the nascent musical ideas are placed in sequences. This ‘state’ is amplified and animated by the application of mechanical devices and digital techniques common within electronic music (e.g. looping, glitching, splicing), here distinctively transplanted into an instrumental context and applied within additive structural design. The prolongation of structural units allows the ideas to reveal themselves and move towards different states or outcomes. For example, successive iterations of the chiptuneesque material (M-G [see diagram]) in Turquoise become increasingly animated, building to climax, implosion and disintegration (b.271-311). While the fundamental temporal implication of the formal design is one of expansion, these various states complicate perception of time. For example, the transposition from b.168 of Sublime towards the edge of the piano range where it becomes stuck (b.219) creates the perception of temporal stasis.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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