Michael Finnissy: Vocal Works 1974-2015
- Submitting institution
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University of Durham
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 116392
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- Winter & Winter
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2018
- 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
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This output combines a CD recording with a book chapter. Taken as a whole, these evidence the significant depth and breadth of research undertaken by Weeks into Finnissy's vocal music for this project.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Michael Finnissy’s output for vocal ensemble contains some of his most important pieces, works which are among the most striking in the genre in the last 40 years. They have been almost completely neglected owing to their ferocious performative difficulty, requiring technical and musical virtuosity at the limit of the achievable. This project aimed to bring this music to public and critical attention in performance, broadcast, recording and scholarly commentary: the output consists of the first commercial recording of four major works and a book chapter focusing on issues of compositional style and its implications for the works as performance. The four pieces, recorded 2015-16, span most of Finnissy’s oeuvre: Cipriano (1974), an early success for the composer, is documented on the disc by its first live performance in 40 years; Tom Fool’s Wooing (1975-8/2015), the most flamboyantly complex of the set, is also documented by a live performance of its very belated world premiere. The other two works were recorded in the studio: Kelir (1981) dates from the start of Finnissy’s ‘microtonal folk’ period and is the first revival of the work since its premiere; Gesualdo: Libro Sesto, an EXAUDI commission, is a recent work (2012-13) which looks back to the density of his earlier style. All four works took the performers to their vocal and musical limits: the aesthetics of such performative extremity are explored in the chapter “Finnissy’s Voices”, published in Critical Perspectives on Michael Finnissy (London: Routledge, 2019), in which Weeks argues, drawing on the work on vocality by Brandon LaBelle, that the work’s extreme – or excessive – performative difficulty should be seen as an attempt to embody the voice, locating it tangibly within the singer’s entire body and articulating a radical physical performativity in which ‘song’ is reconnected with ‘singing’ as a bodily act.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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