The Conquest of the Useless (Prologue; Caruso; Gold is the sweat of the sun, silver are the tears of the moon)
- Submitting institution
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Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 2885260
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- February
- Year
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- 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
- 'Conquest of the Useless' comprises three parts, 'Prologue', 'Caruso' and 'Gold is the sweat of the sun, silver are the tears of the moon' composed over the span of several years and lasting for around 70 minutes. Together, they are a free adaptation for the concert hall of 'Eroberung des Nutzlosen', Werner Herzog’s obsessional journal of the making of 'Fitzcarraldo', itself the story of an obsessional (fictitious) rubber merchant who dreamed of building an opera house in the South American jungle. I was myself obsessed by Herzog’s oversized, but ultimately elusive, metaphors and the underlying question for this work was to find a way to translate them into music.
Having completed the first two parts, I embarked on a separate stage work, 'Sweat of the Sun' (2016) (a separate output in this submission) before returning to complete this concert trilogy. Although the two works ('Conquest…' and 'Sweat…') share the same source material in Herzog’s book and indeed, on occasion, some musical material, they are two quite separate works with different aims.
'Conquest of the Useless', and in particular the last part 'Gold is the sweat of the sun, silver are the tears of the moon', explore the idea of a postmodern translation of late romantic orchestral lieder such as Mahler’s 'Das Lied von Der Erde'. "Nature" and the poet’s "inner world" are depicted through music, and the piece makes frequent and explicit use of word painting and leitmotif. The piece is also in a dialogue with 'Ich wandte mich und sah an alles Unrecht, das geschah unter der Sonne' (Ecclesiastical Action) (1970) by Bernd Alois Zimmermann and makes compositional use of tone rows presented in that piece.
The first two parts of 'Conquest of the Useless' were composed and premiered prior to the current assessment period: 'Caruso' was premiered in December 2012, and 'Prologue' in May 2013; however, the last (and longest) part 'Gold is the sweat...' was composed entirely during the assessment period and premiered in February 2019, which was also the premiere of the complete work. All three parts are included in this submission because, despite its compositional history, the work is intended to form a complete whole. (Neither 'Caruso' nor 'Prologue' were submitted to REF 2014.)
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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