On What Weft are Woven the Waters.
This multi-component single output is represented by a score and a recording (hyperlinked from the PDF). It is a 70-minute composition for mixed ensemble of western instruments and singer with gamelan musicians, premiered at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2017. Published by Ricordi (London).
- Submitting institution
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Guildhall School of Music & Drama
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- HINROLA
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
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- 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
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- Reserve for an output with double weighting
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- Additional information
- The project’s generous dimensions permitted within one work the integration of four discrete strands of creative research:
- music for concertante clarinet and ensemble;
- scena-like material for voice and instruments, setting text from the Rig Veda;
- ongoing investigation into bridging Western instrumental material and gamelan (begun in 'Tiger’s Nest', 2015) to create a ‘hybrid’ music (Sorrel, 2007);
- music for gamelan and (prepared) piano.
Separate strands can be also configured into different groupings for performance (see score, p. v). This ‘modular’ potential enables greater flexibility for programming.
Particular technical and aesthetic features evidence research processes derived from the overarching aim of East-West integration (philosophical and aesthetic). Buddhist conceptions of universal oneness—the whole in the part–are symbolised through systematic development of Nørgård’s ‘infinity series’ (1959), analogous to gamelan’s use of identical lines running simultaneously at different tempi. This builds on techniques explored earlier in 'The Horse Sacrifice' (2000), revealed most fully in this work’s final movement. Equivalent processes include:
- processual development from violent, chaotic and dialectical language to an explicitly ritual quality, representing a ‘face-off’ between two cultures;
- exploration in musical terms of the importance of twinning in Hindu myth (and other philosophical ideas suggested by Roberto Calasso’s 'KA'), demonstrated by doubled or paired instruments/players;
- rigorous application of harmonic rules derived from rhythmic structures, e.g. in movement VIII, ‘The Island of the Rose Apple’ (an ancient name for India), where 7th, 11th and 13th harmonics appear on notes of corresponding duration to create a hermetic ‘island’ world;
- integration of gamelan tunings (these colour the tuning from the start, but their origin in gamelan is revealed only after seven movements);
- exchange of instrumental sounds across conventional boundaries: percussive sounds in non-percussion instruments (string left-hand pizzicato, clarinet percussive sounds); percussion ‘air bowing’; percussive cheek-slapping.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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