The Harmonic Canon: Music for Percussion. Premiered at the 2017 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Released on nonclassical in 2019. Also performed at Royal Albert Hall. Won the 2018 BASCA British Composers Award in the solo or duo category.
- Submitting institution
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Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- Murcott1
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- November
- 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
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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
- The Harmonic Canon is a composition whose materials emerge from the unique properties of the custom-made bell that it is written for. The design of the instrument emerged from collaboration between sculptor and composer and was the first bell designed using Finite Element Analysis to be cast at The Loughborough Foundry. Almost all large bell design has adopted this method. The double bells of the instrument are a semitone apart, the lower posesses a prominent major 3rd and the upper a minor 3rd, this common tone becomes the fundamental pitch of the work, designated by a low gong and rising to the highest note of the glockenspiel. As well as a pitch axis, a harmonic axis ranges from the most harmonically pure tones (bowed glock) to the most noise-laden (cymbals and tamtam). The composition places the double-bell centrally in both axes so any transition from noise-pure tones, low-high pitches, emerges from or moves through the bell. The unusual collection of auxiliary percussion reinforces the homogeneity by being metal only, and the tones of the rapid sections use unisons that are unlikely to have been heard before this piece. Ridges on both halves of the bell are designed to illicit specific partials when struck, giving the impression of multiple instruments. The structure of Movement I is an extended journey from contrasting materials emerging from singular bell strikes, towards a section (TT) where these ridges become the primary focus (using a rhythmic technique derived from Nancarrow’s Piece for Tape). The bell is able to spin within it’s cradle creating a pronounced Doppler effect as well as complex phase anomalies. A crucial aspect of the composition was to use this extraordinary visual and auditory affordance in an effective but sparing way, hence only at the end of Movement I, played last.
http://www.arxduo.com/events/2017/11/20/huddersfield-contemporary-music-festival-uk
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
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- English abstract
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