Portfolio of compositions

Abstract

My music is generally composed against a background structure of defined time. At the same time as holding what might be described as this purely formal concern, I am also increasingly drawn to narrativity, i.e. ways of thinking about music which may be susceptible to ideas from film and literature. My research has therefore centred on this question: how can seemingly formal musical processes relate to and illuminate issues of narrativity? In the course of this research I have considered the importance of cyclic models of composition, both to myself and to previous composers, and how such models might relate to theories of myth, plot structure and the recurrence of formal archetypes in the output of a single artist. As examples in my own work, I cite first in my portfolio a single movement work which is the final work in a cycle of six related compositions for piano solo, and then a song cycle based on multiple voicings of the experience of a classical, semi-mythical figure. To conclude I show how concerns with formal rhythm and narrativity have led naturally into work with archive silent film, resulting in two very different scores for the abstract short film Rain (1929), and a longer narrative film, I Was Born, But... (1932). In the course of the commentary, I relate compositional methodology to notions of musical rhythm and visual rhythm, and the structuring of images and sound in time.

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