A Musical Composition for Large Orchestra on fragmentation, time and the limits of coherence.
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Southampton
Department Name: Faculty of Humanities
Abstract
To what extent can a piece of music reflect the turbulence and fragmentary quality of our internal lives or of the external world?
If the work can do this, can it also stay a satisfactory musical whole?
If it does not seem whole, will it be a formal failure, or instead a provocative, new kind of expression?
My proposed new piece seeks to address these issues by pushing a musical form built out of fragments to its limits. The fragments will sound as such because of the way the sections of the music stop and start, how continuous flow will suddenly be ruptured. This will also go to the heart of the play of extremes in the harmonic language, and in the use of stylistic contrast too.
I also wish to address the issue of musical time in the piece, and in particular how our perception of time in music may be affected by orchestral texture and instrumental layering - as much as by how one event follows another. In particular I want to investigate if it is possible to evoke the perception of more that one kind of time simultaneously. An analogy to this may be seen in the way our memories can appear to us to contain more than one image from different times in our pasts (as well as our present) at the same time.
Such exploration has a perceptive aspect, and a formal one too. But there is also a vital expressive side. I see much of my music as a dialogue between the 'passionate' and the 'contemplative'. An explicit focus on different kinds (and degrees) of musical time, their juxtaposition and their layering, will develop an understanding of how these 'poles' may best and most powerfully be evoked through music. Further I will seek to uncover how this temporal-expressive question interlocks with orchestral sound. I see antecedents for this in the work of Mahler - the opening of his first symphony is a powerful example. Equally I see the orchestral music of Thomas Ades as occasionally exploring such a field, the end of his recent Tevot is one such example. But neither's music puts an explicit focus on the issue as I propose.
As well as my piece shining its expressive and formal light on the subjects it contains, I wish further to reflect on how I am making the piece - in the act of composition, and not only after it. To that end I will write a regular blog from the stages of pre-composition to the completion of the piece, in which I will detail my workings: elaboration of materials, testing of ideas, development of form, thinking about the relationship of intuition and rational construction and so forth.
The language here will necessarily be technical at times, but I aim too to write in such a way that an interested general reader will be drawn deeply into my musical world.
If the work can do this, can it also stay a satisfactory musical whole?
If it does not seem whole, will it be a formal failure, or instead a provocative, new kind of expression?
My proposed new piece seeks to address these issues by pushing a musical form built out of fragments to its limits. The fragments will sound as such because of the way the sections of the music stop and start, how continuous flow will suddenly be ruptured. This will also go to the heart of the play of extremes in the harmonic language, and in the use of stylistic contrast too.
I also wish to address the issue of musical time in the piece, and in particular how our perception of time in music may be affected by orchestral texture and instrumental layering - as much as by how one event follows another. In particular I want to investigate if it is possible to evoke the perception of more that one kind of time simultaneously. An analogy to this may be seen in the way our memories can appear to us to contain more than one image from different times in our pasts (as well as our present) at the same time.
Such exploration has a perceptive aspect, and a formal one too. But there is also a vital expressive side. I see much of my music as a dialogue between the 'passionate' and the 'contemplative'. An explicit focus on different kinds (and degrees) of musical time, their juxtaposition and their layering, will develop an understanding of how these 'poles' may best and most powerfully be evoked through music. Further I will seek to uncover how this temporal-expressive question interlocks with orchestral sound. I see antecedents for this in the work of Mahler - the opening of his first symphony is a powerful example. Equally I see the orchestral music of Thomas Ades as occasionally exploring such a field, the end of his recent Tevot is one such example. But neither's music puts an explicit focus on the issue as I propose.
As well as my piece shining its expressive and formal light on the subjects it contains, I wish further to reflect on how I am making the piece - in the act of composition, and not only after it. To that end I will write a regular blog from the stages of pre-composition to the completion of the piece, in which I will detail my workings: elaboration of materials, testing of ideas, development of form, thinking about the relationship of intuition and rational construction and so forth.
The language here will necessarily be technical at times, but I aim too to write in such a way that an interested general reader will be drawn deeply into my musical world.
Planned Impact
A number of non-academic parties will be beneficiaries of my work.
Firstly, the work itself will be heard in the context of the BBC Symphony Orchestra's main season's concerts at the Barbican Hall, London, which holds 2000 people.
Secondly the broadcast on BBC Radio and subsequent web diffusion of the work will reach many more thousands of people.
The work will naturally have fundamental impact on the orchestra and conductor and all those involved in the management of the orchestra too.
Further, wide-ranging impact to the general reading public may be made about the work through publicity and pre-concert articles in newspapers and journals, and in post-concert reviews of the work.
One cannot pre-determine how any one listener may respond to a work. But in general terms, the listening public will benefit from hearing a work that will, I trust, have a whole range of affects: stimulation, challenge, provocation, exposure through the music to questions of musical language, exposure through a musical work to different experiences of time, exposure through the musical work to questions of musical form, exposure through the musical work to questions of aesthetics especially as to the nature of musical postmodernism, exposure to beauty. I see the work moving from the known to the unknown: as such it will benefit the listener with new, previously unheard aesthetic experience.
The website will take the form of a blog accessed by a variety of means: directly, via my University homepage, via the Departmental music homepage, via University of Southampton intranet learning site 'Blackboard'. It will include language that will be of an academic level. But I intend it nevertheless to read in such a fashion that an interested amateur will be drawn in, and be able to engage deeply with the piece. Thus those of the general public who visit the site will benefit from a close understanding of what usually remains private - the working methods of a composer at the time of composing. My writings here will also provide further insight into the research issues the piece contains, and so feed beneficially into repeated 'active' hearings of the piece.
Firstly, the work itself will be heard in the context of the BBC Symphony Orchestra's main season's concerts at the Barbican Hall, London, which holds 2000 people.
Secondly the broadcast on BBC Radio and subsequent web diffusion of the work will reach many more thousands of people.
The work will naturally have fundamental impact on the orchestra and conductor and all those involved in the management of the orchestra too.
Further, wide-ranging impact to the general reading public may be made about the work through publicity and pre-concert articles in newspapers and journals, and in post-concert reviews of the work.
One cannot pre-determine how any one listener may respond to a work. But in general terms, the listening public will benefit from hearing a work that will, I trust, have a whole range of affects: stimulation, challenge, provocation, exposure through the music to questions of musical language, exposure through a musical work to different experiences of time, exposure through the musical work to questions of musical form, exposure through the musical work to questions of aesthetics especially as to the nature of musical postmodernism, exposure to beauty. I see the work moving from the known to the unknown: as such it will benefit the listener with new, previously unheard aesthetic experience.
The website will take the form of a blog accessed by a variety of means: directly, via my University homepage, via the Departmental music homepage, via University of Southampton intranet learning site 'Blackboard'. It will include language that will be of an academic level. But I intend it nevertheless to read in such a fashion that an interested amateur will be drawn in, and be able to engage deeply with the piece. Thus those of the general public who visit the site will benefit from a close understanding of what usually remains private - the working methods of a composer at the time of composing. My writings here will also provide further insight into the research issues the piece contains, and so feed beneficially into repeated 'active' hearings of the piece.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Michael Gordon (Principal Investigator) |