I have recently performed in the Centre Stage concert series. You can find details about this series here. I presented four world premieres, two of which were written especially for the concert. This post serves as a review of the concert, and … Continue reading Performing in the Centre Stage concert series
LSTwo ensemble will premiere ENERGY CANNOT BE CREATED II: 4B4 (chamber ensemble) on 1st May in Leeds. They will also perform works by Finnissy, Hoban, and Mclaughlin. There will be a pre-concert talk before the concert where I will discuss my music along with the other composers Hoban and Mclaughlin. Specific times can be found here. Continue reading Upcoming Performance: LSTwo
I will be performing in the Centre Stage concert series in February. The following works will be premiered: ‘…it’s (al[l]/[ready]) been done!’ (2013), fixed-media electronics ‘It sounds an isochronism.’ (2015), solo piano and fixed-media electronics ‘Read between the…’ (2013), fixed-media electronics To Rave in a Fifteenth-Century Discotheque from another Time Entirely. (2015), solo string instrument and fixed-media electronics The concert will also feature work from other female composers, details of which can be found on the following poster (photo by Cormac Ó Callanáin). Highlights from the concert can be heard here: 1) Knitted, Crocheted, Looped – Morag Galloway Morag Galloway – voice, viola Margaret … Continue reading Upcoming Performance: Centre Stage concert series
I have been reading Michael Beil’s article ‘Material Shift‘, which can be found in Musical Material Today edited by Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Frank Cox, and Wolfram Schurig. The following is by no means an exhaustive review of Beil’s text, but a collection of points which resonate with my current research. I highly recommend reading the whole book, details of which can be found here. The article is interesting in that it presents a particular perspective on defining ‘material’ in musical composition (something which is not straightforward in general). According to Beil, it is the meaning of ‘material’ which takes precedence over the actual ‘material’ (which is defined as ‘building … Continue reading Michael Beil: Material Shift
Tomorrow I will present a paper at a postgraduate symposium in Leeds. This presentation forms part of my ongoing PhD research. An abstract is included below: One can investigate the compositional process in terms of the conflict between restriction and freedom. Restriction can take many forms, some of which are imposed by logistics (for example, instrumental practicalities and performer ability), and others which are imposed by the composer (such as macro- and micro-level patterning processes and extra-musical concepts). These often then become the basis of stylistic conventions and, in a way, ‘knowledge’. Freedom exists in symbiotic relation to restriction, and … Continue reading The Composer’s Paradox: An Exploration of Restriction and Freedom in the Compositional Process
The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (HCMF) is a nine-day long festival of contemporary music, typically held every year in November. The following is a brief account of some of the pieces, from the festival, that have inspired some thoughts about my own compositional approach (having said this, I didn’t attend every event at the festival). I am writing about them here as a means of gathering some thoughts and promoting further composition and research. The opening night ended with a memorable performance of Salvatore Sciarrino‘s Lohengrin by Sofia Jernberg and musicians assembled by nyMusikk Bergen. The performance was amazing. It highlighted the technically-skilled timbral (especially of the voice) exploration of Sciarrino’s … Continue reading hcmf// Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2014
The Ridge is beyond the Edge (Fixed-Media Electronics) will be performed this Sunday 2nd November in the ‘di_stanze festival of electronic music’ in Leeds along with other works by contemporary composers. More information can be found here. Below is a brief programme note about the piece: The Ridge is beyond the Edge is about a state of limbo induced by the act of ‘waiting to wait’ within a timeline that is not straightforwardly linear. This act of ‘waiting to wait’ is not to be confused with the act of simply waiting, which suggests a wait for something and a state … Continue reading Upcoming performance: di_stanze festival of electronic music
OK, so I’ve just been having a listen to Iannis Xenakis’s Orient Occident. It was actually engaging from beginning to end. When I first heard it, what struck me about this piece was the placement of sonic events (er, so … Continue reading Iannis Xenakis: Orient Occident
I have been reading Trevor Herbert’s chapter ‘Social History and Music History’, which can be found in The Cultural Study of Music. It has been encouraging thoughts about the notion of ‘History’ and how to define it. This can be done in relation to a number of methodologies. Nevertheless, as Herbert’s chapter demonstrates, the conglomerate of these methodologies does not produce a definitive classification of what ‘History’ is. However, I think this is a good thing. It suggests that ‘History’ is potentially a dynamic social organism in itself. Herbert’s chapter explains that the development of an overall body of historical methodology … Continue reading ‘Social History and Music History’
I have been listening to Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2, and it has inspired some thoughts about art and its associations with something ‘other’. Here is a description of Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2, taken from Ethan Haimo’s Schoenberg’s Transformation of Musical Language.I am including it here because I think it provides a concise, yet comprehensive, introductory description of the work: The String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10 may well be the most heterogeneous of all of Schoenberg’s compositions. No other of his compositions has four movements of such strikingly different character. No other of his compositions begins as an instrumental … Continue reading Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2
Tomorrow I will present the following at a postgraduate conference in Leeds. The research is still in development. An abstract is included below: The process of encountering a work of art potentially involves a hidden ‘violent’ event. In ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, Martin Heidegger portrays the encounter with an artwork as entailing a dynamic strife-filled ‘world’ of sociocultural and historical relations and signifiers that is paradoxically both autonomous and reliant on human interaction. Although Heidegger explains that the overall interpretation of such a work of art is not violent, but transports the receiver into an ‘openness’ opened … Continue reading A Violent Encounter? : Notions of Hidden ‘Violence’ in Compositional Thoughts, Acts, and Encounters with the Work of Art
The Interlocutor is my most recent composition and it was performed by Discord earlier this week. It is for French horn, electric guitar, electric bass guitar, piano (doubling keyboard), and electric five-string violin. As a (very) basic description of the composition’s structure, it is based on the dynamics of conversing. Although a seemingly simple compositional procedure, I intend the form to be more complexly dynamic, and I think that Discord brought this out. Composing for Discord was very useful, not only did it force me to consider writing for these instruments in the context of this particular ensemble, but working with the performers introduced me … Continue reading Performance of *The Interlocutor*: ensemble Discord
Some of my current research has led me to acknowledge a comparison between what is realistic/unrealistic and realist/non-realist drama. According to Egil Törnqvist and Birgitta Steene (translators and editors of Strindberg on Drama and Theatre) Strindberg’s preface to Miss Julie … Continue reading August Strindberg (1849-1912): Preface to *Miss Julie*
I recently listened to Horațiu Rădulescu’s streichquartett nr. 4 opus 33 performed by the Arditti quartet. The vast spectral sound-world of 128 strings is striking and quasi-fantastical. About Horațiu Rădulescu: Roman-French composer Horațiu Rădulescu frequently employed spectral techniques in his compositions. His sound-worlds are described as ‘cosmic’, ‘strange’ and ‘archaic’. Oliver Messiaen described Rădulescu as a composer who ‘contributed to the renewal of musical language’. [1] About streichquartett nr. 4 opus 33: This piece is composed for nine spatialised string quartets. A central live string quartet surrounded by an audience who are, in turn, surrounded by eight string quartets which, according to Rădulescu, … Continue reading Horațiu Rădulescu’s streichquartett nr. 4 opus 33
I presented the following at the ‘Music and/as Process’ Symposium in Huddersfield last summer. Although my research has developed since then, this presentation is still relevant to my current perspective on music’s relationship with society. More than anything else, though, I am fascinated with Michel Foucault’s article ‘Of Other Spaces’. His concept of ‘Heterotopia’ opens up a perspective on society that resonates with my own ideas about composition. Art is invariably a social event and we must acknowledge this in our quest to explore its mechanics. An awareness of Foucault’s ‘Heterotopology’ can potentially guide the compositional process and expand the existing perspective of semiotics that music and … Continue reading Considering Compositional ‘Spaces’ as ‘Heterotopias’: ‘Music and/as Process’ Symposium
alannah.co 