Plain, Air : for string quartet and electronics
- Submitting institution
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Royal Holloway and Bedford New College
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 37071708
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- September
- 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
- “Plain, Air” is a 45-minute work for string quartet and electronics, premiered by the Spektral Quartet at Openlands Nature Preserve in 2018. It investigates methods of heightening audience appreciation of the natural environment and performance space. Informed by R. Murray Schafer’s concept of the soundscape, the piece builds upon work in acoustic ecology such as Janet Cardiff’s “Forest Walk” (1991), extending the listening experiences of a soundwalk to contemporary concert music.
The piece opens with a processional/soundwalk for the audience and three musicians, allowing direct interaction with the sonic environment. The musical language investigates the experiential tension between a nature walk and the concert setting, in particular via timbral shifts between noise and pitch. The first composed sounds are percussive signals that draw attention to, rather than mimic, the ambient sounds of nature. Gradual changes from unpitched sounds to sustained tone, then from harmonic fields distorting into white noise, informed my choices of instrumental techniques such as knocking, various types of pizzicato, and extreme scordatura.
Spatialisation of fixed-media electronics is uniquely designed for the venue. At the outdoor premiere, the electronics consisted of twenty portable speakers dispersed along a half-mile forest path. At subsequent performances in indoor spaces, the soundwalk has been recreated with digital spatialisation or different sizes of speaker arrays. With each installation, participants interact anew with the space and sonic arrangement.
The immersive aspects of this work develop principles of sound art installations, such as Stephen Vitiello’s “All Those Vanished Engines” (2010), via the use of curated sound in a changing natural environment. The work extends the notion of site-specific composition, exploring the acoustic ecology of each performance site while being adaptable to different locations. Further contextual information about the research is given in the appended text of a talk given at City University in September 2019.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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