'The Devotions' (2014) for eleven instruments (30').
- 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
- 23E
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2014
- 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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- Research group(s)
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1 - Composition
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘The Devotions’ is a three-movement, thirty-minute work for eleven instruments that develops and refines compositional approaches to ensemble performer and musical material interactions, variation and transformation through repetitive patterns and clarity in complex textures. For example, in the first movement, three sequences of material are gradually transformed and superimposed to create complex musical interactions. The piece also translates notions of intimate ceremony into music through the independence and gradual drift of consonant sound and obsessive melodic repetition.
The starting point for this work is the J.D. Salinger short story ‘Franny’ in which the protagonist induces a mediative state through repetition, against a backdrop of a fashionable North American restaurant. Each movement demonstrates stark musical juxtapositions then gradual incorporation through variation and repetition. The piece further explores varied interactions within the ensemble: the eleven instruments operate initially in three distinct groups; in the second movement three of the instruments act similarly but independently while the ensemble develops a more extensive slow rhythmic unison, and the third movement further distributes these unisons and independent behaviours. These interactions are directly informed by notions of ritual prayer and ceremony, from the layout of the ensemble, the systematic behaviours within and between groups of instruments, and more individual ‘private’ repetitions.
The piece benefitted from extensive workshops with the ensemble (BIT20) to address virtuosic ensemble and instrumental performance practice, and to consider the aesthetic implications of the different ensemble interactions.
‘The Devotions’ was co-commissioned by and performed at Huddersfield Contempoary Music Festival (2014) and Borealis Festival, Norway (2015), for performances with BIT20 (Norway) with broadcasts on BBC Radio 3, and national radio in Norway and Denmark.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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