By Reason of Darkness : a Fantasy for Three Mixed Choirs (SABar) & Tubular Bells
- Submitting institution
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University of Aberdeen
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 69041228
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- October
- Year
- 2015
- 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
- By Reason of Darkness (2015) continues my work with space, reverberation and resonance (sonic and cultural) that has been at the forefront of my research as a composer for the past decade. This piece looks particularly at place as another concept linked to these research strands, specifically my relationship as an artist with my locality: its culture, history and sonic landscape. The work juxtaposes the sacred and the secular, the ordered with the free and the natural with the mechanical. Throughout the piece there are different hierarchies of sonic material: from taped sounds, to non-pitched vocal sounds through to a sustained chorale and bell cadenza, all of the sounds seeking to illuminate the short biblical passage which gives the work its title. Like much of my work, the piece also relates to ideas of tradition, reimagining and reencountering existing and possibly defunct modes of expression, with the earlier form of the ‘fantasy’ now co-opted as the basis for a vivid exploration of sound, gesture and place.
Place is a thread that links much of my work: whether real, imagined, constructed or hazily remembered. Place is individual, yet communal; intrinsic, yet ephemeral; personal, yet political – it is a concept that means one thing to one person and something different to another. By Reason of Darkness is my first realisation of place where I currently reside, a country not of my birth but one linked through an ever-unravelling political thread – it is home, but not home; familiar, yet distant – a difficult and disturbing phenomenon to unpack culturally and artistically. The combination of unpitched vocal noise with sustained modality, aleatoric utterances with elemental chords, and fragments of local poetry with well-worn scripture is a representation of this uneasy relationship, where place is the constant that binds together disparate aesthetic considerations.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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