Category: Composition

Aural Territories: how phenomenology taught me how to compose electroacoustic spatial music

Posted on 1st December 20149th May 2019 by Frederico Macedo (University of the State of Santa Catarina, Brazil)

In this article I describe the process of creation, performance, and reception of two sets of multichannel pieces - Journey I and II and Night Song I and II - performed as part of Aural Territories: a concert of spatial electroacoustic music. The main philosophical foundation for this experience has been the views on phenomenology as conceived by Merleau-Ponty (2004) and Dufrenne (1973). In these pieces, I explore compositionally three aspects of the interrelationship between sound and space that were fundamental for my theoretical and practical understanding of electroacoustic spatial music: acoustic space, sound spatialisation, and reference.

Audium – sound-sculptured space

Posted on 1st December 20149th May 2019 by Stan Shaff

Audium has established a series of ideas, expanding the layers of controlled sound in space and evolving a paradigm for positioning and listening. Additionally, it has taken a new architectural approach to the performance-space, with a potential for flexibility through a myriad of environmental combinations.

A direct link to the past: nostalgia and semiotics in video game music

Posted on 2nd June 20149th May 2019 by Sarah Pozderac-Chenevey (University of Cincinnati College, Conservatory of Music)

The multimedia nature of video games and the interactivity of the medium create new possibilities and purposes for nostalgia, as Bastion (2011), Fallout 3 (2008), and The Legend of Zelda series (1987 to present) illustrate. In Bastion, composer Darren Korb uses iconic signifiers of nostalgia to create an empathetic response within the player to the in-game character’s longing for a lost world and time. Fallout 3, in contrast, uses the player’s own familiarity with the popular music of the 1930s and ’40s to heighten the destruction of the world after an in-game nuclear war. Finally, The Legend of Zelda series, which made music a major part of its gameplay in Ocarina of Time, uses music indexically and symbolically in Twilight Princess to prompt a nostalgic response within the player that mirrors the response apparently felt by the main character in the game, Link.

Introduction: Temporalities in contemporary music

Posted on 1st March 20139th May 2019 by Richard Glover (University of Huddersfield)

Issues of temporality remain close to many musical discussions, yet there remain comparatively few sustained theses on the subject. In particular, contemporary and experimental musics, which can offer radically unique temporal experiences, provide many rich untapped sources for scholarly investigation. Often, research stops short of examining the actual experience, rather falling back to focus upon what information can be drawn from the score, or the compositional intentions behind a piece. But what is the relationship between these composed designs, and individual temporal experience?

Temporality as an analytical approach to minimalist music: Tom Johnson’s An hour for piano

Posted on 1st March 20139th May 2019 by R. Andrew Lee (Regis University, Colorado)

Minimalist compositions thwart most attempts at analysis given their remarkable simplicity; their structure is often deliberately obvious. The experience of a minimalist piece, however, is anything but simple. These compositions encourage the listener to ignore the past and the future, memory and expectation, and explore an extended present.

Time, eternity and the problem of minimal music’s alleged non-linearity in Louis Andriessen’s De Tijd

Posted on 1st March 20139th May 2019 by Maarten Bierns (University of Amsterdam)

This article explores contrasts between time and eternity in Louis Andriessen’s De Tijd from 1981. The music, although inspired by the experience of “complete tranquility”, appears to establish a dialectical opposition between musical elements signifying timelessness and measured time.

Looking inward: La Monte Young, Arvo Pärt, and the spatiotemporal dwelling environment of minimalist music

Posted on 1st March 20139th May 2019 by Sarah C. Davachi (Mills College, California)

There is a thread of epistemic theory connecting the discourse of twentieth-century aesthetics and phenomenology which asserts that works of art open up or disclose a sort of ‘world’, so to speak, as well as an associated view of reality that accords with the subject’s primordial and embodied sense of being.

Scanning the temporal surface: aspects of time, memory and repetition in my recent music

Posted on 1st March 20139th May 2019 by Bryn Harrison (University of Huddersfield)

This paper considers the role of musical temporality and memory in the recent works of composer Bryn Harrison. In contrast to earlier pieces, the essay outlines the ways in which these pieces adopt a singular approach to musical structure which utilises high levels of repetition. It is argued that, through this approach, the listener is able to build up a composite understanding of the surface of the music over time. Comparisons are made to the scanning of a picture plane, and the work of Bridget Riley, James Hugonin and François Morellet are given as examples. The paper ends with a description of a new collaborative project with digital artist Tim Head which seeks to develop on this same phenomenological approach.