Abwesenheit (2017) 22.2-channel acousmatic composition, dur. 13’50’’
- Submitting institution
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De Montfort University
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 33102
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
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- Year
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
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- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
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- Criminology
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- Interdisciplinary
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- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
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- Reserve for an output with double weighting
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- Additional information
- Abwesenheit proposes the notion of absence as a conceptual basis for constructing meaning in acousmatic music. Material derives from original field recordings made in Vienna, especially the garden of Beethoven Wohnung Heiligenstadt (the title refers to an inscription in Beethoven’s op. 81a). In the idea of absence Abwesenheit avoids evocation of a literal sense of place. Definitive projections of location are backgrounded in a spectral approach to acousmatic music, focusing on correspondences of energy and pitch across categories of deeply transformed material. The familiar concept of a natural acoustical sound model of attack-resonance is supplanted by one of ‘energy concentration-dispersion’—processes of merging and diffusing interactions of material toward points of tension or repose.
Compositional processes involved stripping material back to essential strands of texture or overtone structure then extended electroacoustically into new sound forms. This also aimed to blend tonal and spectral conceptions of the function of pitch, and finding rhythmic momentum in the materials’ natural morphologies. The shaping of tensions and steering of implications arising from spectral evolution, spatial morphologies, melodic profiles and rhythmic patterns was influenced by what Gérard Grisey termed ‘pre-audibility’—mental predictions of possible future states of sonority extrapolated from perceived patterns and tendencies—predictions imagined even if ultimately absent from sound-worlds as they evolve. Two compositional strategies around absence emerged: (1) shaping and grouping materials to imply movement toward points of tension/release, cadence or renewal; (2) projection of the sonic fabric toward plausibly naturalistic, though ambiguous, sound states which never decisively materialise as traces of real objects or spaces. The loudspeaker array allowed diffused/delocalised and highly textured, evanescent forms of spatialisation— aiming to project a sense of immateriality and reinforce an apparent absence of definitively physical sound sources.
Created for and premiered by the Vienna Acousmonium (24.9.17); Awarded first prize, Musica Nova 2020 (Prague).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
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- English abstract
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