Compositions Reflecting the Nature of Old Hispanic Melisma
- Submitting institution
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The University of West London
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 33005
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
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- Year
- 2017
- 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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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This is a multi-component output of three compositions supported by contextual information.
i) Tread Softly (10 minutes 19 seconds audio file and score PDF). Premiere performance 2015. Score published by Edition HH, 2017.
ii) Present Shadows (2 audio files – Movement 1: 5 minutes 17 seconds; Movement 2: 6 minutes 50 seconds – and score PDF). Premiere performance 2016. Score published by Edition HH, 2018.
iii) Moments Held (9 minutes 49 seconds audio file and score PDF). Recorded June 2017 at Kings College, London.
Contextual information consists of a journal article co-authored by Efthymiou; further details of dissemination; and four short videos on the research process and insights.
The research proposes a new methodology for what has been described by Pugh and Weisl as experiential medievalism. Specifically, novel approaches to interpreting unpitched neumes in Old Hispanic Chant are presented that demonstrate new modes of intellectual and creative engagement with music from this period. Structural elements were analysed from the chant, specifically the unusually extended melismas that promoted a sense of an embodied timeless present placed within a moving compositional framework. These abstracted structural elements of Old Hispanic Chant generated new formal processes that convey a perceptual sense of compositional movement within static formal archetypes.
In these pieces, stasis is achieved by means of expansion and contraction, mirroring of musical material, and static harmonic thinking. These techniques are overlaid with devices that promote a sense of clear movement. This disorienting of the listener’s perception of musical time creates a sense of the static, yet moving, quality of Old Hispanic Chant. As such, the works propose novel formal models and thinking that can be applied to other works.
The research was part of ERC-funded project Shaping Text, Shaping Melody, Shaping Experience in and through the Old Hispanic Office (€1,470,658; grant 313133; 2013-2018).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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