Portfolio of compositions
Portfolio of compositions
The eight pieces in this portfolio constitute an exploration of several aspects of Western musical discourse, drawing mainly on medieval and modernist musical traditions, as well as certain developments in twentieth century visual art and literature. Found materials (such as plainchant, a medieval cantiga, a keen and several nineteenth century operas) and found practices (such as cipher-based and number-based compositional techniques) are transformed to yield hitherto unknown musical syntheses. All the pieces have relationships to text, whether the text remains a silent inspiration or is vocalised and, in the latter case, a wide variety of text-setting strategies and vocal registers is investigated. The pieces also show an engagement with, and exploration of, notation as a vital ingredient of musical discourse. All these aspects of the compositions (historical, transformative, textual and notational) show how the pieces embody the relational and intertextual characteristics of compositional endeavour.
The accompanying commentary presents a broadly phenomenological view of the portfolio, describing my lived experience of making music. In particular, it examines the compositions in terms of four activities, which get to the nub of what I am doing when I compose: transforming, synthesising, provoking and learning. The discussion takes an anti-Cartesian view of knowledge and thus articulates (i) how, through these activities, I engage with the world around me, a world which perforce includes my compositions, and (ii) how the compositions, in turn, relate to others, such as listeners and performers. In essence, it outlines the philosophical and contextual significance of the music: how, and in what ways, the sounds, texts and notations point beyond themselves.
University of Southampton
Habron, Christopher John
1c842d19-7626-4692-9ffc-0e270253a931
2006
Habron, Christopher John
1c842d19-7626-4692-9ffc-0e270253a931
Habron, Christopher John
(2006)
Portfolio of compositions.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
The eight pieces in this portfolio constitute an exploration of several aspects of Western musical discourse, drawing mainly on medieval and modernist musical traditions, as well as certain developments in twentieth century visual art and literature. Found materials (such as plainchant, a medieval cantiga, a keen and several nineteenth century operas) and found practices (such as cipher-based and number-based compositional techniques) are transformed to yield hitherto unknown musical syntheses. All the pieces have relationships to text, whether the text remains a silent inspiration or is vocalised and, in the latter case, a wide variety of text-setting strategies and vocal registers is investigated. The pieces also show an engagement with, and exploration of, notation as a vital ingredient of musical discourse. All these aspects of the compositions (historical, transformative, textual and notational) show how the pieces embody the relational and intertextual characteristics of compositional endeavour.
The accompanying commentary presents a broadly phenomenological view of the portfolio, describing my lived experience of making music. In particular, it examines the compositions in terms of four activities, which get to the nub of what I am doing when I compose: transforming, synthesising, provoking and learning. The discussion takes an anti-Cartesian view of knowledge and thus articulates (i) how, through these activities, I engage with the world around me, a world which perforce includes my compositions, and (ii) how the compositions, in turn, relate to others, such as listeners and performers. In essence, it outlines the philosophical and contextual significance of the music: how, and in what ways, the sounds, texts and notations point beyond themselves.
Text
1044389.pdf
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More information
Published date: 2006
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 466157
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/466157
PURE UUID: 5577f80d-0c17-4873-ae14-b449151644a3
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Date deposited: 05 Jul 2022 04:33
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 20:32
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Contributors
Author:
Christopher John Habron
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