Soldiers’ Stories: a multi-component output comprising three electroacoustic compositions based on oral histories of Allied army veterans
- Submitting institution
-
De Montfort University
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 33105
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2020
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This submission contains three electroacoustic compositions dealing with the experience of war. Double weighting is requested on the basis of:
- The extended scale of the submission (127 minutes of music, including two works realised in 16-channels and one in stereo).
- The subsequent time taken in realisation of the works: 42 months over 2014-15, 2019 and 2020.
- The supporting background research (searches in the Imperial War Museum sound archive over 20 months mid-2012 - 2014) to identify content articulating the human dimension of war.
- The resulting range of experiences explored and contrasted through the works.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The research content of this submission comprises three electroacoustic compositions based on oral histories of Allied army veterans.
- To the Red Sky [TTRS] incorporates testimonies of 20 men and women WWI combatants and nurses;
- An Angel at Mons [AAM] the eye-witness account of an angelic apparition at the Battle of Mons;
- Once He Was a Gunner [OHWAG] a New Zealand soldier’s oral history of the 1943-45 Italian campaign.
TTRS and AAM involved extensive searches at Imperial War Museum sound archives for source material; while OHWAG develops an original oral history. TTRS is an electroacoustic-only version of Red Sky (2014-15) for instrumental trio and 14- channel soundscape (with ACE grant of £5,200). TTRS retained Red Sky’s architecture, with additional digitally-realised material expanded to 16 channels.
The body of research aimed to find solutions to the framing of the oral histories as coherent sound-driven forms with expanded sound vocabulary, through:
- Coding verbal content to build original text-based meta-narrative, with the specific theme of the human cost of war.
- Embedding verbal content within electroacoustically-developed soundscapes to articulate the vividness and emotive quality of war memories.
- Studio-based processes of sound transformation to dramatise storytelling imagery as re-imagined memory.
- Blending linear and non-linear virtual timescales through fusion of spoken word, speech-derived transformations and parallel musical structures in forms hybridising memory-based storytelling and layers of musical sound design.
First performances: AAM (University of Montréal, 25.4.14—15.1 channel); TTRS (De Montfort University 27.2.19—16 channel); OHWAG (Radio New Zealand Concert 3.10.20—stereo). [Red Sky 12 April 2015, New Walk Museum Leicester]. Supporting material: ‘Figures of Speech: Oral History as an Agent of Form in
Electroacoustic Music’, LMJ, v. 28, 2018, articulates findings in TTRS and AAM, and the text ‘Listening Back and Shaping Form’ adds additional perspective on OHWAG.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -