Sehnsucht : for chamber ensemble
- Submitting institution
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The University of Birmingham
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 24084975
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
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- 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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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- The German title points towards the quality of ‘yearning’, but with the added allusion towards something that can never quite be reached. This psychological complex, which is also fluid, is one that maps well onto musical ebb-and-flow. Part of the research here is my ongoing pursuit of musical materials, motions and textures that can capture this emotional territory of loss, memory and temporal distance.
This is set inside a broader, more generalizable research agenda to do with the development of a 21st musical language grammar:
1) The expansion of the means, and definition, of tonality. How can the notion of relationships to a centre be ‘stretched’? Can atonal or ‘vagrant’ musical passages be considered tonal in terms of a work’s global architecture. Where is the ‘breaking point’?
2) The use of tonal elements to invoke ‘past’ musical styles, idioms and ‘types’. In some works of mine, reference to the past is through explicit quotation. Here, it comes through allusions to previous music, in the ‘cut’, contour and weave of materials. Can there be a discourse that complements and enriches the content of pitch relations, through woven ‘style allusions’? Can the expressive core of the idea of ‘Sehnsucht’ be embodied in relations of style as much as in abstract musical materials?
3) The placement of climaxes at unusual points, with the intention of pressing the listener to re-assess notions of the convention of musical climax. By placing the biggest climax a third into the piece rather than at a conventional two-thirds point, the piece’s centre of gravity is shifted. In so doing, I investigate how the piece’s duration could be subjectively perceived as longer than its clock-time length. How much can a work’s projection of ‘expressive weight’ be affected by the placing of climax points within a structure?
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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