Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses
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ItemSeeking the “dirty-beautiful”: An investigation into a compositional practice informed by shadows, impermanence and ambiguity( 2022-12)This creative-based research comprises a folio of original compositions, totalling two hours of music, and a written exegesis of 25,000 words. The portfolio explores the developing influence of a “dirty-beautiful” aesthetic, reflecting both a poetic worldview and preferences that shape a compositional language and sound world. Parallels are drawn with the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi and seeking beauty in the unusual, perishable, blurred or dimly lit shadow. A preference for creating dualities in order to dissolve them to reach a space in-between is established, particularly through an exploration of themes of lightness and darkness. Choices concerning register, timbre, activity and stasis, harmony and texture are situated on a continuum, building the foundations of this personal compositional style. The folio of compositions includes orchestral works, a flute concerto and four chamber works, plus a staged musical work for young audiences. A framework for reading music for wabi-sabi qualities is established and underpins the conceptually based qualities for writing music that I term “dirty-beautiful”. These qualities are paralleled most clearly in the music of Kaija Saariaho and Toru Takemitsu. Notions on how vulnerability might inform musical ideas and composition are also explored through both textural, sonic forms and personal experience relating to identity, gender and the notion of giving voice through in-depth analysis of many folio works. The accompanying folio of music compositions was composed between late 2014 and early 2019. It presents Arcane for symphony orchestra (2014-15); No Distant Place for piano, clarinet and violin (2015); Everything is Illuminated for violin, viola, cello, double bass, piano, percussion and harp (2016 rev. 2018); When We Speak for solo cello and fixed electroacoustic track (2016 rev. 2017-18); Strange Charisma for solo prepared harp (2019 rev. 2021); Flute Concerto (2017); excerpts from The Owl and the Pussycat, an opera for young audiences (2017–18) and Penumbral Shadow for chamber orchestra (2018–19). I arrive at a point where I am able to question and evaluate what writing music means to me as a composer.
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ItemFinding flow: constraint and the creative process( 2021)The application of constraints during the process of music composition can be creatively stimulating and directive. However, constraint is potentially restrictive when acting as restraint, stifling the spontaneity of musical idea or the instinctual flow of creative process. A creative folio at its core, this research examines how the application and consequent dissolution of constraints during the compositional process affect musical outcome. The dissertation presents an in-depth analysis of select folio works to illuminate how constraints were constructed and implemented, when and why rules were broken, and how this influenced musical outcome. The thesis then examines how use of constraints evolved over the course of the folio, reflecting on the concept of flow and creative process. The work evaluates how the application of constraints aides in resolving compositional problems as well as facilitating a state of flow during the creative act.
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ItemFrom Counterpoint to Composition in the Early L'Homme armé Mass( 2020)Fifteenth-century music theory seems remote from fifteenth-century composition. Florid polyphony in three or more voices stands in contrast to the rhythmless, note-against-note consonant progressions in two voices found in counterpoint treatises, making it difficult to analyse composed music in terms of the contrapuntal theory of the period. This dissertation proposes a new analytical framework for one form of fifteenth-century composition, the four-voice cantus firmus mass of the 1460s and 1470s. Research of the last twenty years has substantially reshaped our understanding of medieval musical training and practice and by combining this new awareness with tools for digitally-assisted musicology, it becomes possible to test the relationship between the surviving compositions and counterpoint teaching. The opening chapters summarise this research and describe these tools. This summary leads to a method of analysis that allows a prestigious, coherent body of repertoire—the early masses on the L’homme arme cantus firmus—to be measured against the most comprehensive statement of fifteenth-century counterpoint, Johannes Tinctoris’s De arte contrapuncti. Analysis reveals that Tinctoris provides an accurate description of elements of fifteenth-century compositional practice but that his teaching considers only one of several contrapuntal techniques at work within the L’homme arme masses. A comparison of passages with and without cantus firmus permits a description of these other forms of counterpoint, while an awareness of this contrapuntal variety enables an understanding of mass composition as the interaction of distinct contrapuntal techniques based on changing voice-pair relationships. Further analysis based on cadential voice pairs confirms the relationship between counterpoint and composition through the effective elimination of divergences from Tinctoris’s teaching The conclusion presents a general theory of four-voice polyphonic texture as a compound contrapuntal entity. Through its two-level structure, this theory provides an opportunity for the empirical analysis of compositional style and has further potential applications to the problems of source criticism, attribution and reconstruction.