This Departing Landscape for symphony orchestra
- Submitting institution
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University of York
: A - A - Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies : A - A - Music
- Output identifier
- 63069154
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
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- Year
- 2019
- 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
- _This Departing Landscape_ (2019; BBC commission, BBC Philharmonic, cond. Volkov): score plus recording of BBC R3 broadcast, 01.07.20. Supported by a Philip Leverhulme Prize for research (2016-18).
Dufourt (1979) defines spectral music in opposition to serial music by (amongst other polarities), characterising it as implicitly dynamic interacting fields of force versus implicitly static concatenations of individual units. A related perspective from Xenakis (1971) compares transformations in musical materials with changes in the energy of a gas across different pressures and temperatures. This issue of ‘energy’ in music, as an absolute, quasi-measurable property (e.g. amplitude, frequency, event-density) but also its psychological manifestations (perceived tempo, loudness, timbral thickness, the effect of repetition, and so on), is the primary research area of _This Departing Landscape_.
The motivating question was: is it possible to write twenty minutes of orchestral music with an extremely high level of energy maintained throughout? While a great many techniques are used to achieve this aim, two basic approaches are taken: extreme contrast, irregular cross-cutting and generally short note-lengths on the one hand, and extreme continuity of unvaryingly loud long note-lengths on the other. In order to mitigate against perceived energy-loss-through-acclimatisation, processes of intensification are applied across all material-types, most often through an increase in density and/or implied tempo.
Such concerns intersect with (and extend) Grimley’s (2013) characterisation of the contemporary symphony as a means of ‘articulating time and space’. The secondary research issue in _TDL_ is thus an assertion of the continued relevance of a ‘symphonic’ approach in twenty-first century orchestral music. The restriction to two material-types (a melodic fragment and a harmonic principle of stacked 5ths and 3rds) alongside large-scale gestures of departure and return together indicate that Fanning’s (2013) emphasis on ‘internal motivation’ and negotiation of dualities are still applicable in a pitch-driven yet non-tonal context.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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