'House of Mazes' (2017), for mezzo soprano, flute/alto flute/bass flute, cello (25-30’)
- 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
- 43A
- 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
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- Criminology
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- 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
- In ‘Houses of Mazes’ I investigate ways in which the experience and design of mazes can inform my musical process, practice, and approach to performer interaction. Mazes serve as a multi-textual metaphor within the composition, entangling poetic descriptions of mazes, the imagined and documented psychological experience of being lost (e.g. ‘Ovid Metamorphoses’, ‘8AD’), and musical engagements with solo and group puzzles and games (e.g. Saunders ‘Everybody do this’, 2014).
The music engages and critiques descriptive (‘conventional’), ‘prescriptive’ (Kanno, 2007), and graphic notation (e.g. Cardew, ‘Treatise’, 1967) in order to problematise performer decision-making, generate ‘lostness’ in terms of performer experience and interaction, and evoke new timbral qualities and sonic behaviours. The work deploys prescriptive notation to reimagine approaches to parametric decoupling (e.g. Lachenmann, Cassidy etc.), foregrounding timbral concerns. This necessitated practice-based performer collaboration investigations to explore instrumental glitch, audible experiences analogous to being lost, and musical-game play, which tangibly impacted on the notation and sounds. The process of making this piece also serves as a metaphor for considering the labyrinthine experience of composition itself, with artist decision-making seen as analogous to maze navigation and what it is to start, structure and finish a new work.
The composition was funded by Arts Council England and premiered at the University of Manchester by Trio Atem, one of eight performances across the UK. A publicly available film of the work adds visuals and highlights the performers’ inherent theatre to enhance the connection between maze and disorientation. The research has been presented in fora/conferences on eleven occasions across the UK. ‘House of Mazes’ forms part of ongoing composition research informed by mazes including ‘Thread’ (2017) and ‘TOMB’ (2019). Other works in the series appear on the HCR label and have been performed at venues including the Southbank Centre, and internationally, including BIFEM (Australia).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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