Post-spectrality and 'after'-tonality
- Submitting institution
-
University of York
: A - A - Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies : A - A - Music
- Output identifier
- 67298966
- 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
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This project comprises five compositions: the output represents an extended enquiry into the core questions across the different instrumental forces and contexts. The process is therefore multi-layered and demonstrates a sustained research effort of considerable depth. While length is not necessarily an indicator of complexity or research scope, it should be noted that the output contains approximately 90 minutes of music (and the total span of music written for one of the pieces, these bones, this flesh, this skin, is several times that of a single iteration, since the listener-viewer selects components).
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- These compositions, supported by a Philip Leverhulme Prize for research, address the same questions through different forces and contexts: _these bones, this flesh, this skin_ (TBTFTS), 2020; _Her Lullaby_ (HL), 2019; _Meditation (after Donne)_ (MAD), 2018; _Emily’s Electrical Absence_ (EEA), 2017; _The Tuning_ (TT), 2019. Details of performance, etc are provided on scores (website snapshots for online-only TBTFTS).
The insights of spectralism include approaches to timbre, texture and time, but these compositions respond to a specific limited aspect of spectral technique: deriving pitch materials, microtonal or otherwise, from the harmonic series or analyses of found sources. The potential expressive range of this underlying model is demonstrated by the diversity of compositions. Additionally, each uses a technique of sounding a ‘virtual fundamental’, providing an aural link to triadic harmony: this allows relationships between sonorities audibly close to tonal music, without the music ‘being’ tonal. In this ‘after-tonality’, the tonal effect is simultaneously evoked and undermined.
Within 12edo, a ‘spectral’ two-octave scale derived from odd-numbered harmonic partials 7-27 allows the total chromatic to be contextualised by a bass fundamental. Simple, folk-like melodic structures can be embedded within denser pitch spaces (TT:I,III); conversely, otherwise non-tonal linear streams can be contextualised (EEA:I). This framework also facilitates a polymodal approach, with ‘conflicting’ diatonic subsets projected from the two-octave field (TT:IV). Other tonal/spectral intersections include EEA:IV, built on microtonal projection from the harmonic sequence of the Adagio of Schubert’s Quintet; and the cadence-patterns of HL and TBTFTS, both of which utilise JI with a shifting 1:1.
While ‘real’ spectra derived from bells define the microtonal verticals of MAD, the formant-harmonies of EEA:III are from a sequence of imaginary vowels. A further ‘synthetic’ approach appears in EEA:II: a segment of a 24edo-approximated harmonic series is manipulated according to pc-set principles, extending Forte’s theory microtonally.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
