HANS ABRAHAMSEN AND A RECURRENT ‘CHILDLIKE’ RHYTHM

Hans Abrahamsen has reused the same rhythm across four pieces spanning 33 years: in his Ten Studies, for solo piano, and Six Pieces, for horn trio (both from 1984), in Schnee (2008) and in Three Pieces, for orchestra (2017). Because self-borrowing is crucial to Abrahamsen's compositional practice, this rhythm provides a case study in his compositional priorities, particularly in the role canonic techniques play in his music. Although the rhythm's formal properties lend it a marked asymmetry at the foreground, it is presented in Schnee as part of a canon with highly symmetric pitch materials. But despite this apparent conflict between symmetries and asymmetries, Abrahamsen's music freely combines different approaches to the rhythm, as long as it is linked to a high-register shimmer, suggesting that Abrahamsen's noted uses of canons are largely for textural ends.

An Examination of the Chance Elements in Witold Lutosławski's Music, with Particular Attention to Its Function as a Model for Compositional Practice

<p>This thesis studies the use of aleatory techniques in Witold Lutosławski's music and the issues that arise when using aleatoricism, a branch of textural composition that has room for exploration. I focused my study on three of Lutosławski's major works, analysing his approach to aleatoricism, form, and macro- and micro-rhythm. I wrote three works for the portfolio component. My approach to aleatoricism differed in each work. Through studying Lutosławski and my own composition, I came across practical issues in creating the score, issues with performers, and compositional problems. However, once these issues were worked though, aleatoricism is a exciting compositional device that is not yet tired.</p>

An Examination of the Chance Elements in Witold Lutosławski's Music, with Particular Attention to Its Function as a Model for Compositional Practice

<p>This thesis studies the use of aleatory techniques in Witold Lutosławski's music and the issues that arise when using aleatoricism, a branch of textural composition that has room for exploration. I focused my study on three of Lutosławski's major works, analysing his approach to aleatoricism, form, and macro- and micro-rhythm. I wrote three works for the portfolio component. My approach to aleatoricism differed in each work. Through studying Lutosławski and my own composition, I came across practical issues in creating the score, issues with performers, and compositional problems. However, once these issues were worked though, aleatoricism is a exciting compositional device that is not yet tired.</p>

The Pen as Camera

The photographic effect of overexposure is analogous to Michael Finnissy’s technique of selective musical borrowing. Just as a photographer uses the camera to allow an overabundance of light to wash out pictorial details, Finnissy uses his transcriptive pen to allow an overabundance of silence to alter and fragment his borrowed sources. Case studies demonstrate Finnissy’s borrowing of cadential phrases by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, and Bruckner in his solo piano works Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sind (1992) and The History of Photography in Sound (1995–2001). Comparing original sources, unpublished sketches, and published autographs reveals the composer’s precise transcriptive mechanisms. Measuring the alteration of tonal function enacted by specific harmonic and rhythmic distortions illuminates Finnissy’s pre-compositional practice while celebrating the sonic experience of his music on its own terms.

Composition as Hyperobject

This article considers compositional practice in relation to Timothy Morton's ideas surrounding the hyperobject. The aim is not to analyse compositional practice through the prism of the hyperobject or indeed apply the concept to composition. Rather, I allude to Morton's ideas as a way to think through some aspects of compositional practice. In particular a move away from compositional conventions, such as 'the work' or the 'singular creator,' which will be discussed in relation to two of my recent projects Auricularis Superior andDecay. Importantly, this approach understands composition as a practice that deals with the situated peculiarity of the human condition, and in a time when our world is changing dramatically, it too, must consider these changes and respond. In their writings, both Donna Haraway and Timothy Ingold propose a greater emphasis on our entanglement with the world as the basis of our sense of self, rather than the petrocapitalist idea of the individual self that is improved by consuming. This shift would allow us to respect and treat others and our environment with more respect and care, but also develop a new understanding of what it is to be a human entity. I propose that compositional practice can be part of this endeavour.

Modulating Couplets in Fanny Hensel’s Songs

This chapter examines Fanny Hensel’s responses to the flow of syntax, thought, and feeling across poetic couplets. Poetic analysis identifies instances of syntactic independence and dependence between couplets, as well as logical relations of interpretation, opposition, and continuation. Hensel’s settings are shown to respond with precisely calibrated tonal shifts, cadences, sequences, harmonic changes, declamatory rhythms, and textures. Comparisons of settings by Hensel and Robert Schumann highlight distinctive aspects of Hensel’s compositional practice. The chapter considers couplet settings first in song beginnings, and then in song continuations with particular song forms (strophic, varied strophic, and ternary) in mind. The chapter builds on prior work by Stephen Rodgers and R. Larry Todd, which draws attention to the tonal fluidity of Hensel’s music. Implications for performance and music-text relations are considered as well.