Towards a musical fragility - portfolio of compositions
- Submitting institution
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The University of Leeds
: A - Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies : A - Music
- Output identifier
- UOA33A-4471
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2018
- 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
- Thurley’s experimental compositional practice is concerned with the concept of ‘fragility’ and what fragility has to do with music, both as an overarching aesthetics of practice and as a conceptual tool for listening to ‘fragile’ music. The elements of Towards a Musical Fragility consider the topic from a range of perspectives, especially investigating performative, notational, and audible modes of encountering fragility. Fragility is approached as a sort of tension or performative risk, familiar from the music of the so-called New Complexity, undertaken by reframing a performer’s relationship with their instrument, often compounded by a radical quietness—alien to the New Complexity, but allied with the music of the Wandelweiser composers—which demands even greater physical control and restraint.
In some cases, as in whose veil remains inscrutable (2014), this is achieved through an engagement with the notational idiosyncrasies of the score, which create a sense of friction, as performers try to orient themselves. More recently—as in polynya, or ever less (2018) and o horizon, gloa on the forest floor (2018)—the focus is placed increasingly on the performer and on performance, underscored by an ascetic dialogue between performer and precarious, unfamiliar instrumental systems or prostheses. This tension becomes, too, theatrical, enhancing audience encounters with fragility, since tremors and instabilities become palpable both sonically and dramaturgically.
The pieces included within the submission were premiered at the impuls festival in Graz (whose veil remains inscrutable) by Ensemble Nikel and at the Darmstadt New Music Courses (polyna, or ever less and o horizon, or gloa on the forest floor) by Rahel Schweizer and Nate Chivers. They have since received further performances in Argentina, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. whose veil remains inscrutable has had a commercial release on CD (Ensemble Nikel, A Decade, 2017).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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