Horpinem: An Exploratory Fanfare Composition for Orchestra
- Submitting institution
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University of Portsmouth
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 16046689
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- January
- 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
- 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
- Horpinem is a fanfare composition for orchestra, written in 2016. It was performed at Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff, by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales on 30 January 2017 and recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The full score and recording elements of this output, submitted via USB stick, can be requested from the REF archive.
Horpinem deploys musical materials to explore a central research question about the leading function of a traditional fanfare. It draws on four bars (an extended cadence) from Brahms’ Intermezzo in A Major, Op.118/2, utilising its harmonic rhythm and pitch material. Brahms’ harmony is mapped onto a new architectonic structure and it is also used at a ‘surface level’ in order to generate harmonic progression. It is, however, juxtaposed with Stravinsky’s well-known harmonic field from Le Sacre du Printemps, the antithesis of harmonic progression (Walsh, 2001). The resulting subversion of the leading nature of traditional functional harmony, elongating and ultimately delaying harmonic resolution, serves to question the notion of direction that is specific to the traditional context of a fanfare which ‘leads’ to the other pieces within a concert. As functional as an encore (a cadence to a concert) as much as an opening, it questions: Is this the start of the rest of the concert?
Horpinem builds on other exploratory works that utilise tensions between traditional and contemporary materials to discourse about musical forms and functions, especially pieces commissioned to open the ‘Last Night of the Proms’ such as Birtwistle’s, Panic (1997). In its approach, Horpinem builds on works like Adams’ Tromba Lontana (1985) and Britten’s polytonal Fanfare for St Edmundsbury (1959), by seeking to fuse the underpinning notions of a nullified functional harmony with the leading function of a fanfare and contributes to understandings of discursive approaches to fanfare composition.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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