Tiger’s Nest.
This multi-component single output is represented by a score and a recording (hyperlinked from the PDF). It is a composition for solo percussion, two pianos, two solo gamelan players and gamelan ensemble. Co-commissioned by Cheltenham Music Festival and the Southbank Centre, with the support of the Britten-Pears foundation. Published by Ricordi (London).
- Submitting institution
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Guildhall School of Music & Drama
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- HINROLB
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2015
- 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
- This research explores the incorporation of Javanese gamelan instruments into Western art music contexts, leading to insights concerning complex interrelations between musical cultures and hybridised performance practice. As Sorrel (2007) notes, there are two main challenges in combining these traditions: gamelan’s ‘use of unique tunings’ and its instruments’ ‘remarkably consistent function’. The composition thus sought to avoid pitfalls characterised by Sorrel as ‘pastiche’ and ‘illusions of authenticity’ whilst evoking the character and mystery of Bhutan’s sonic landscape. This hybrid work investigates areas where gamelan practice overlaps with the researcher’s exploratory approach, primarily achieved through celebrating the indeterminacy of gamelan tuning—for example by use of alternative versions of the same notional pitch in all instruments (Movt. I), retuned pianos, and unequally tempered harmonics.
The research explores tensions between the traditionally precise notation yet flexible instrumental roles in much contemporary art music (see piano and percussion parts) and the fixed function of gamelan instruments with no cultural relationship to notation, exploiting for Western concert-music ends the imprecision of both pitch and ensemble relished in gamelan culture and blurring the dichotomy between the two styles. Western instrumentalists play alongside gamelan orchestra players who do not read Western notation, with gamelan soloists mediating between the two (Movt. III; p. 30) or forcefully leading into new material or speeds (Movts I-II and V; p. 39). The work also investigates the dynamic of ‘leading’ and ‘keeping together’ through frequent use of irama (tempo) change, conceived in gamelan philosophy as a change in the decoration of each unit/beat and paralleled in Western use of metric modulation (Movts II & IV; p. 10; p. 37). The choreographic looseness in ensemble layout mirrors the looseness in other parameters, evoking both an improvisatory sense and the democratic nature of gamelan revealed by collective decision-making between its multi-instrumentalist musicians.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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