Apparitions (2016) 8-channel acousmatic composition, dur. 17’31’’
- Submitting institution
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De Montfort University
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 33104
- 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
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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
- Yes
- Additional information
- The research aim in Apparitions was to investigate what I have termed the ‘partial object’. This idea developed from an amalgamation of acousmatic music’s capacity to derive structural meaning from sound source recognition with the spectralist technique of disassembling the harmonic and morphological features of sonority. In this context the ‘object’ is cognate with Michel Chion’s notion of the auditum (thing heard)—an holistic perspective integrating referential imagery, affective qualities and the structural features of sound. In order to access and manipulate these qualities, families of ‘partial objects’ were created by locating and extracting essential features of the material (via selective extraction of harmonics, attacks and time-slices of varying lengths). By retaining defining traces of referential meaning and spectral colour, material could then be subjected to further digital transformation as flexible agents of timbral extension, gestural shaping and formal design. Vestiges of a spectral profile (such as distinctive zones of spectral register or defining attacks) may also function dually as agents of sonic development and heralds of emergent sound identities. As such, the work also aims to address the issue of expectation in acousmatic music by stimulating states of anticipation and realisation, particularly through the weaving of pitched strands derived from or implying movement toward plausibly naturalistic identities. A set of original field recordings forms the basis of the work (the horn of an American freight train, an ensemble of hunting horns from Bourges Cathedral, the Ave Maria from a Florentine church, a chorus of Tyrolean cicadas and an impulse response recorded in Gustav Mahler’s last composing hut in Dobbiaco).
There are four sections: 1. Passage (0’00’’); 2. Hall of mirrors (6’56’’); 3. Emergence (11’51’’);
4. To the ether (14’59’’)
Apparitions was commissioned by the Manchester-based new music ensemble Distractfold and premiered at the Bludenz Festival, Austria, 18.11.17.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
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- English abstract
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