Gravity's Horizon, Part 1
- Submitting institution
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University of Bristol
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 94616450
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2016
- 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
- A studio recording was planned to follow the concert première on 7 Feb 2020. However, Trio Sonore’s pianist suffered a serious injury shortly before the concert, and another pianist took his place for the première. The recording could not go ahead because this was specific to the Trio.
Covid lockdown together meant that other concert performances, in planning with the Trio for 2020, were suspended, including a performance at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival 2020, with a trio of prominent American players (festival cancelled). Instead, the earlier recorded version was played in the online replacement for NYCEMF.
- 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
- 18’ composition for flute (doubling bass drum), cello, piano, live electronics — comprising printed score, software platform in Max, and “digital score” files.
It explores the compositional problem of how to create expressive, detailed ensemble chamber music, in which electronics contributes a sonic detail and apparent agency comparable to that of human players — while at the same time having behaviours that could not be human. It casts the electronics in ways that allow great musical specificity yet also resist hardware- and software-obsolescence and resultant ephemerality.
Analysis of real instrument sounds, into their partials, allows additive resynthesis. This established model allows precise extension/ anticipation of live instrument sounds, but is greatly extended in Gravity’s Horizon: every partial in the synthesis can be transformed and controlled in many parameters. I added features to the synthesis as the music demanded it; and the composition responded to emergent capabilities. The synthesis engine can be readily defined in pseudocode. The parametric control is separated in a “score”, as human-readable JSON data. Score and engine are separately and mutually stable, allowing the composition to grow and new cues to be written; or the synthesis possibilities to be extended; without conflict. Performance tempo adapts to the human players.
The creative methodology gave rise to a computer “instrument”, for which I could write fluently in Gravity’s Horizon – and that is also finding use in my subsequent research with very different concepts of control. The structural articulation allowed my performance “host” software also to iterate and improve, gaining general utility.
Co-commission: Trio Sonore; and University of Bristol, for public launch of the Brigstow University Research Institute.
Premiere: Trio Sonore, Wills Hall, Bristol, 13 October 2016. Full version: 7 Feb 2020, Victoria Rooms, Bristol.
Contextual material: video of premiere; demo recording; software documentation; dissemination summary.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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