Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses

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    Seeking the “dirty-beautiful”: An investigation into a compositional practice informed by shadows, impermanence and ambiguity
    Cheney, Lisa Jessie ( 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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    The Mutability of Bach: New Arrangements of J.S. Bach’s Accompanied Violin Music for the Saxophone
    Kenealy, Justin Maurice ( 2022-12)
    Since the invention of the saxophone in the 1840s, the practice of arrangement has played a pivotal role in developing and enriching the instrument’s repertoire. This project explores the repertoire of the concert saxophone, with a special focus on the use of new and existing arrangements of works by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750). Repertoire included in the project follows a tradition of saxophonists of the last century combining original works with arrangements of works for other instruments to add musical variety to their programs and recordings. This performance-based thesis consists of a performance folio of 210 minutes, comprising 75% of the overall project, and a written dissertation of 25,000 words (25%). The folio includes a combination of live and studio recordings presented as three distinct programs: a survey of original saxophone repertoire, existing arrangements of Bach for the saxophone, and the new editions of the five selected works. This practice-led thesis expands the repertory by creating new arrangements of five accompanied violin works by J.S. Bach: Concerto in A minor BWV 1041, Concerto in E major BWV 1042, Sonata in G major BWV 1021, Sonata in E minor BWV 1023, and Fugue in G minor BWV 1026. The process behind the development of these new Bach arrangements for the saxophone is explored in the dissertation, informed by a study of Bach’s own practice as an arranger. Complementary analysis of arrangement techniques utilised by saxophonists and other wind players since the middle of the twentieth century provides further context for the creation of new arrangements. Through this analysis, a set of general arrangement principles are established and employed to resolve areas of significant conflict between the technical capabilities of the violin and the soprano saxophone. Issues of tessitura, multiple stopping, and phrasing and breathing are addressed to ensure the new editions are idiomatic for the saxophone. The complete, notated arrangements are included as appendices to the dissertation.
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    Breath of Metamorphosis: Improvisation and Interdisciplinary Performance in Contemporary Recorder Playing
    Williams, Ryan Christopher ( 2022-12)
    This thesis is an exploration of the recorder in a contemporary music practice. My practice focuses on improvisation, especially free improvisation, interdisciplinary performance, and the performance of notated works. By undertaking both collaborative and solo projects, I have investigated the use of the recorder within my contemporary music practice and traced the different ways in which I employ improvisation. This performance-based thesis consists of a portfolio of recordings (75%) and a written dissertation (25%). The design of my research is primarily based on Robin Nelson’s Practice as Research methodology and the principal aim is to investigate my use of the recorder and improvisation across my practice in contemporary music. The recorded portfolio, consisting of both audio and video recordings, showcases a diverse range of collaborative, creative, and improvisation led performances that explore key elements of my research enquiry. The recorded portfolio is divided into three main categories. Category 1 consists of recorded works that were created with a focus on using sound with other artforms in an interdisciplinary way, while category 2 demonstrates my work within free improvisation on two collaborative recordings and one solo recording. Notated works that were commissioned from Australian composers, and the performance and preparation of these pieces are the focus of category 3. Improvisation plays a critical role in all the music presented via the creative process, select notated scores, and the recorded performances. The recorded portfolio is supported by a written dissertation which provides context and critical reflections on the creative material. The written dissertation provides an introduction to the recorder in improvisation and discusses my free improvised practice with an emphasis on extended techniques. I investigate newly commissioned notated works for the recorder and reveal links between improvisation and composition in the collaborative process. Approaches to interdisciplinary practices are also discussed through case studies focusing on sound, movement, and spoken-word. Appendices of supporting material, which include a discography of free improvised recordings with the recorder and select audio samples that demonstrate my use of key extended techniques, complement the dissertation. Through a combination of recordings, research, and critical reflection, this integrated project offers a unique and broad ranging investigation into a rich and multi-faceted contemporary music practice with the recorder.
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    Latvian Classical Violin Music in Transition, 1980-2000
    Kirsanova, Sofija ( 2022)
    This research explores classical music in Latvia during the period of the Baltic Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet transition. Culture played a major role in this time. As Latvia became independent, it also sought a new, individual voice in music. This research explores the impact of the economic and politic changes on Latvian classical music with a focus on violin through interviews with musicians, newspapers and violin music as a medium reflecting this exciting time in Latvia's history. The thesis comprises 25% of the total submission for the PhD in Music (Performance) and complements the creative portfolio of recordings.
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    Folio of works exploring a genre spectrum that spans contemporary classical music to popular songwriting
    Vincent, Adrian Lachlan ( 2022)
    This thesis is a 99-minute folio of nine original chamber, orchestral and popular contemporary works and an accompanying dissertation. The folio explores a genre-spectrum that spans contemporary classical music to popular songwriting, with a large, genre-hybrid song cycle for orchestra, voice and electronics as the centrepiece. Volume I comprises scores and audio of the works. Volume II is a dissertation of 24,000 words that illuminates the folio works, using score excerpts, sketches, drafts, graphs, screen-shots of notation software and audio examples to provide depth to the analysis. The following research questions are addressed: What is the impact of different software programs (or use of none) on my composition process and resultant outcomes? How can I use and include techniques from both classical and popular music styles to write unique and cohesive new music? What are some recurrent elements of my compositional voice across different genres, and are these elements conscious or unconscious? How can I best repurpose sketched material across genres as a novel means of material generation?
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    The Reception of Dmitri Shostakovich in France, 1934–2000
    Roycroft, Madeline Beth ( 2022)
    In 1989, the French record company Le Chant du Monde sponsored a year-long festival dedicated to the music of the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975). Coinciding with the bicentennial of the French revolution and the restructuring of the Soviet Union, this ‘Annee Chostakovitch’ included the French premiere of the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1932), French releases of earlier Soviet recordings of Shostakovich’s music, and a revival of the composer’s fifteen symphonies. The festival came more than fifty years after Shostakovich’s music was first heard in France: when his popular song ‘Au-devant de la vie’ became the anthem of the Front populaire movement in 1930s Paris, and his Fifth Symphony was promoted by French Communists in Paris in June 1938. This thesis maps the trajectory of Shostakovich’s music in France from late 1934—the year in which his music first gained notoriety in Paris—to the end of the twentieth century. Using ideas from reception theory, it interrogates a wide cross-section of press and other print sources from Paris and the French provinces containing critical discussions of Shostakovich’s fifteen symphonies, his opera Lady Macbeth, and his song ‘Au-devant de la vie.’ In addition to expanding the literature on musical life in France, this thesis complements existing studies of Shostakovich reception in the United States of America, Britain, and Germany. The thesis is structured chronologically in five chapters, preceded by an Introduction and followed by a short Conclusion. It situates critical responses to Shostakovich’s music within France’s evolving political landscape, and suggests that these responses were shaped largely by France’s shifting relations with the Soviet Union, the rising and falling influence of the French Communist Party, as well as trends and preferences in French musical life. I also conclude that writing about Shostakovich’s music throughout the twentieth century served as a means for French critics to articulate their ideas, opinions, and concerns about the USSR.
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    Phenomenological mechanics — an intercultural musical perspective: an inquiry into the experience of directional movement in intercultural music, applying time and motion concepts from physics
    Ward, Michael Francis ( 2022)
    This study is an inquiry into the experience of “vectorial” (i.e., directional) motion in music. It proposes a conceptual model for the experience of directional motion. It then applies the model interculturally, examining the relationship between Western and Eastern linear and cyclic cultural representations of time and corresponding compositional organisation. In its conclusion, it proposes geometrical models of Western and Eastern musical forms as helix and vortex, respectively, presenting musical works that exemplify these concepts. The major research question of the dissertation is “What is the nature of the experience of directional movement in music, and how can this experience be conceptually represented?”. It examines this question via the principal methodological process of a thought experiment. There are four research areas — music as phenomenological mechanics, composition as intercultural metaphor, applications to musical performance and analysis, and newly imagined instruments and novel compositional processes — and 12 research propositions — three primary, three secondary (two exegetical), two tertiary, and four artefactual. The primary research propositions examine the experience of vectorial motion in music, proposing a phenomenologically determined, hierarchically organised, multi-parameter, form-void vector field model. Referencing this model, the dissertation proposes that the experience of directional motion in music can be compared to principles from mechanics, albeit at a purely phenomenological level — a proposition that gives rise to the concept of phenomenological mechanics. In the application of the concept of phenomenological mechanics to composition, the dissertation proposes a novel characterisation of musical development as a phenomenological representation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics — as the phenomenological “organisation of sound” from low to high potential energy states, and from chaos to order. The secondary research propositions present the idea that the experience of musical motion differs in Western and Eastern cultural contexts in accordance with contrasting Western linear and Eastern cyclic cultural representations of time — metaphorically apparent in their respective musical forms — and in accordance with the dualism and monism that characterise form-void representations and their paradigms more broadly. These secondary research propositions thus apply the concept of music as phenomenological mechanics to the concept of composition as intercultural metaphor. The dissertation proposes that, whereas Western music develops vectorially and teleologically to achieve an overall linear form, Eastern music develops non-vectorially and non-teleologically to achieve an overall cyclic form — a process consistent with the concept of intensification, as coined by UK ethnomusicologist Martin Clayton to describe “non-teleological large-scale processes" proceeding by "a process of expansion”. As an application of the research to the performance and analysis of music, the dissertation’s tertiary research propositions thus propose the concept of Western and Eastern musical forms as helix and vortex. Referencing the musical time concepts of Zuckerkandl, Clayton, Kramer, Cage and Fraser, and the musical improvisation concepts of Feisst, the exegesis research propositions and discussion analyse the major and minor artefacts — respectively, a composition and an improvisation, for a 12-drum harmonic tabla set and two variations of modified guitar — as exemplifications of the concepts contained in the written work.
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    Self-Sampling in a Multimedia Practice: An Exploration of Sampling Transformation Techniques & Typologies
    Catterall, Mitch ( 2022)
    Digital sampling has become a prevalent creative technique in contemporary music and multimedia practices. It allows a practitioner to sample existing recorded media and recontextualise it through a multitude of transformation techniques, offering a potent creative tool that has been utilised by many artists to create new works and develop an individual artistic aesthetic. The transformation of media also allows the identity of artistic works to remain fluid - rather than fixed - as the recontextualisation of media pluralises the outcomes of singular events. This practice-led research project comprises a folio of multimedia works and an accompanying dissertation that investigate the use of self-sampling: where the sampled media originates from within the practice itself, rather than being externally sourced. This allows an individual creative aesthetic to emerge through the transformation and recontextualisation of self-made media. A secondary benefit to this approach is that the legal and ethical issues that influence sample-based practices are avoided by removing externally-sourced media; instead focusing on the techniques of transformation, without concern for sample ownership. Alongside these legal and ethical concerns, the process of examining sample-based music can be difficult due to the reliance on aural analysis methods - as heavily transformed samples may escape identification without additional knowledge of the media origin. The analytical tools used in this process can also suffer from a lack of standardised terminology and inconsistent methods of sample categorisation. To aid the process of analysing the works, a Typology of Sampling Transformation Techniques has been developed and is presented in this dissertation. This typology is used to analyse and categorise the techniques of transformation that have been used within the folio of works, uncovering methods and approaches of the creative practice that may otherwise remain veiled.
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    The Performer as Researcher, the Researcher as Performer: Articulating Arnold Schoenberg’s Connection with Johann Sebastian Bach through a Topically Informed Performance of His Complete Works for Solo Piano
    Tieri, David John ( 2022)
    The music of Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) can be difficult for listeners and performers, who often find it cerebral and hard to understand. In this project, I take up the challenge of how pianists can present an eloquent performance—comprehensible and emotionally appealing to listeners—of Schoenberg’s complete works for solo piano. I seek the inspiration behind the music, contending that a listener can see past the image of Schoenberg as a controversial and intellectual composer, and better appreciate and connect with his compositions, if a performer makes artistic choices to emphasise his continuity with the past. I narrow down the problem to Schoenberg’s connection with one composer: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). I face this challenge as a performer as well as a scholar. The project consists of a thesis and a folio of performances. In the thesis, I substantiate the Schoenberg-Bach connection with a close reading of Schoenberg’s comments on Bach in his writings and a topical analysis of references to Baroque conventions in his piano works; in the folio, I demonstrate this connection through my recording of these works. I argue that the connection with Bach, which is explicit in Schoenberg’s writings, should also be implicit in his music, at both deeper and surface levels. The connection between the composers can, therefore, be illuminated in a topically informed performance of Schoenberg’s piano music. The performance folio features my recordings of Schoenberg’s complete published works for solo piano. This folio also includes my recordings of a selection of Bach’s works for solo keyboard, some of which illustrate the connection between the composers. The criterion for this selection of Bach pieces is that Schoenberg mentioned them in his writings. The first chapter of the thesis provides a literature review of existing scholarship on Schoenberg’s connection with Bach, his works for solo piano, and his use of topics. The second chapter outlines my theory and methods: three guiding ideas (haptic knowledge, Schoenberg’s perception of Bach, and musical topics) and three strategies (practice-led research, close reading, and topical analysis). This chapter also presents an original music-specific and performance-related methodology: the artistic-research interaction model. Chapter 3 offers a close reading of Schoenberg’s comments on Bach in the totality of his writings. Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 present a topical analysis of musical figures in Schoenberg’s piano music that can be connected to Baroque conventions. These include Baroque dance, the learned style, the Baroque improvisatory keyboard style, and the pianto. In the conclusion, I outline and anticipate further research into Schoenberg’s piano music, his connections with previous composers, and his use of topics. The thesis concludes with a reflection on the contribution of this project to the field of artistic research, as well as the potential of the interaction model developed and applied here for performer-scholars.
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    Looking for the Gold – A critical ethnographic study using drama therapy to explore voice, agency and power at the intersection of private and public life in aged care
    Ercole, Maya ( 2022)
    This thesis details a critical ethnographic, drama therapy practice-based study examining the interconnectedness of aged care residents’ lived experiences within their socio-cultural environment. This was an emergent study that evolved over four cycles: (1) critical interpretative synthesis of the literature, which helped guide and shape the research design; (2) participant observations within the chosen research community (residential care home); (3) drama therapy (DT) workshops with a small group of residents; (4) semi-structured interviews upon finishing the DT workshops. The study examined the structures and dynamics of power within the research community and explored aged care from a broader socio-economic perspective in Australia. The findings illustrated a complex living environment with a lack of distinct boundaries between the private and the public spheres of residents’ lives. The findings show that negotiating these circumstances inevitably impacted the residents’ ability to enact their voice and agency within their living context. Against this backdrop, the study explored the role that drama therapy can have within the research community. The findings demonstrated that the active and collaborative processes in drama therapy enabled resident-participants to take ownership of their creative participation and witness themselves and others from a new perspective. The creative engagement in the DT group further enabled the participants to deconstruct their institutionalised, cultural, and social identities and explore a renewed sense of self. This transformative process empowered the participants to enact their voice and agency and meaningfully engage in the cultural shift within their home community, reporting a newly found sense of belonging within the DT group. This study makes recommendations for aged care settings to go beyond the mere accommodation of residents’ basic care needs and safety and equally address the disempowering nature of institutionalised living. The study demonstrates that drama therapy methods facilitated by a skilled therapist have the capacity to engage aged care participants in a compelling creative process in which they can exercise their voice and agency, direct their own narrative, and inform the wider socio-cultural system of their lived realities.