Light speed with time canons
- Submitting institution
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The University of Manchester
: B - Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies : B - Music
- Output identifier
- 159456653
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- November
- Year
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- 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
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0
- Research group(s)
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B - Music
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Written to mark the centenary of Eddington’s experimental proof of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, this piece was premiered in Salford, November 2019; the BBC Radio 3 live broadcast is available at https://youtu.be/7eb2UhRLxYY.
The principal objective was to find a musical analogue for Einstein’s Theory, focusing on the phenomenon of time dilation using three methodologies:
1. Light Speed was represented by a cantus firmus (CF), transformed from its conventional position as the slowest-moving voice to become the fastest part – a moto perpetuo – while nevertheless retaining its function as a durational constant underpinning temporal shifts. As the pacing slows, the CF shifts from foreground to background. This was informed by Wegman’s 1994 analysis of the CF mensurations in Obrecht’s mass Ave Regina Caelorum and by reinterpretations of unchanging material to alter pacing in Sibelius’s seventh symphony and Berio’s 'Points on the Curve to Find…'
2. Mensuration canons effect transitions of pace in parts surrounding the CF, informed by canons by Ockeghem, Bach, Messaien and specifically Nancarrow, in whose Studies the entry of the faster voice after the slower results in an acceleration of pacing. Here the process is reversed, generating a deceleration that shifts perception of the canonic material from melodic to harmonic.
3. The nineteenth-century practice of using pivot tones was applied to Spectral Theory (via Tenney’s 'Arbor Vitae' and Lindberg’s 'Joy'): pitch structures used aggregates of tones selected from the notes of the harmonic series for particular fundamentals, but these could be reinterpreted as partials over different fundamentals, so the ear is tricked into perceiving a complex aggregate of notes as a different set of overtones.
Research insights included: the use of rhythmic analogues and proportion to replace pitch-based processes; the articulation of large-scale structure through rhythmic processes; and means of achieving harmonic motion between spectral complexes.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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