'Torus' (2016) – for large orchestra (22')
- Submitting institution
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Royal Northern College of Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 28B
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
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- Year
- 2016
- 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
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- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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1 - Composition
- Proposed double-weighted
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- Reserve for an output with double weighting
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- Additional information
- ‘Torus’ (after the shape) is the first work in the ongoing series ‘Orchestral Geometries’. This research builds on the composer’s work as Leverhulme Artist in Residence (2015), Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Liverpool, where regular conversations with researchers in mathematics informed the compositional approach.
The work is concerned with musical implications that arise from the important mathematical consideration that there are two ways around a torus that do not intersect; musical parameters are therefore torus-shaped by design. In writing the first part of ‘Torus’, the composer considered repeated journeys around the torus in one direction only. Pitch is structured as the expansion and contraction of two major 6th dyads (most prominently in the strings). The combined rhythmic structure of these dyads, also toric, expands and contracts independently according to an exponential function, thus creating a series of unpredictable chord rotations that underpinned further decisions (notably sparsely/densely orchestrated sections). The first torus-shaped chord rotation is experienced in full, after which the series is progressively hidden and/or cut (in tandem with tempi changes) towards its most clipped version encapsulated within the solo viola line (b.422-426). From b.427, the composer primarily considered repeated journeys around a torus in its second direction, in part manifesting as an exponentially timed sequence of descending fast repetitions of a major 6th bounded motif.
‘Torus’ was co-commissioned by BBC Proms and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic who gave the premiere conducted by Vasily Petrenko at the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Proms 2016), subsequently included as part of the BBC Archive Proms 2020. ‘Torus’ has had further performances with the RLPO and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins, has received five BBC Radio 3 broadcasts, and an online video-score (BBC SO/Brabbins / Edition Peters) is available worldwide via PRiSM YouTube. ‘Torus’ won a British Composer Award 2017.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
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- English abstract
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