Criação de música baseada na proporção áurea: abordagem teórica e prática à escala de 34 tons de igual temperamento

The sensory phenomena of music perception are considered to be highly non-linear. The golden ratio plays a key role in nonlinear dynamic systems and has been recognized as an aesthetic element in many places over time. This research develops the 34-note equal tempered scale (34-TET). A microtonal model based on the golden ratio, containing the harmonic musical intervals, and permitting a consistent approach that embraces the different temperaments throughout history, as well as other music cultures. These theoretical properties are practically exposed in two portfolios, including compositional samples of art music with European roots (from the Renaissance to the twentieth century), popular music (bossa nova, tango, swing), maqãm, and Indian music. The second portfolio, created within the scope of this thesis, contains the artistic work “The Asian Garden” combining the equal tempered scales of 34 and 12 notes (12-TET), and provides additional cultural references from China and Japan. The 34-TET scale offers an overall approach to just intonation scale more than twice as good as that of 12-TET, with all consonant intervals well below the differential threshold. If a maximum impurity value was accepted, not appreciably different from that agreed upon when the equal-tempered 12- tone scale was standardized (17.65 cents vs. 15.67 cents), then the 34-TET scale would become, additionally, a useful tool for approaching different cultures.Os fenómenos sensoriais de perceção musical são considerados substancialmente não lineares. A proporção áurea desempenha um papel fundamental em sistemas dinâmicos não lineares e tem sido reconhecida como um elemento estético em vários contextos ao longo do tempo. Esta investigação desenvolve a escala de 34 notas de temperamento igual (34- TET). Trata-se de um modelo microtonal baseado na proporção áurea, contendo os intervalos harmónicos musicais, e permitindo uma abordagem consistente que abrange os distintos temperamentos ao longo da história, assim como outras culturas musicais. Estas propriedades teóricas estão praticamente expostas em dois portefólios, incluindo exemplos de composição erudita com raízes europeias (desde o Renascimento ao século XX), música popular (bossa nova, tango, swing), maqãm e música indiana. O segundo portefólio contém o trabalho artístico “The Asian Garden,” criado no âmbito desta tese, que combina escalas de temperamento igual de 34 e de 12 notas (12-TET), e fornece referências culturais adicionais da China e Japão. A escala 34-TET oferece uma abordagem global à escala de entonação justa que é mais de duas vezes melhor do que a da escala 12-TET, com todos os intervalos consonantes consideravelmente abaixo do limiar diferencial. Se fosse aceite um valor máximo de impureza não muito diferente do valor acordado quando a escala de 12 tons igualmente temperados foi padronizada (17,65 cents em vez de 15,67 cents), a escala 34-TET tornar-se-ia, adicionalmente, uma ferramenta útil para a aproximação de culturas diferentes.Programa Doutoral em Músic

Bird song as a basis for new techniques and improvisational practice with the baroque flute

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/2753 on 03.04.2017 by CS (TIS)Subsequent to a period of training as a flautist, I ultimately specialised professionally on the baroque flute. Consequently, a significant part of my research for a PhD was practice-led. My later career; concerned with dance and choreography, represented a widening and diversification of my interest in music in particular, and the allied arts in general. This was (and continues to be) paralleled, however, with a substantial research-interest in aspects of the performance of music and its potential interconnection(s) with modalities of speech. However, my own research commenced with a strong desire to discover new performance techniques on the baroque flute. Earlier performer/composers on the instrument explored, documented and analysed new ways of performing on the instrument. This research continues that form of practice-led investigation. This investigation has been centred on performance-experiments of an often improvisatory kind, but by the time of its completion, I too became a performer/composer on the instrument. The research became focussed on a critical and analytical study of birdsong. Birdsong offers a degree of pitch and timbral variation of phenomenal power. My research questioned and interrogated the structure; modes of delivery and sonorities in birdsong because I wanted to devise a new method of playing that might approach these avian sonic possibilities and by absorbance, produce a new musical language on the baroque flute. Previous ornithological writings (Thorpe; Armstrong, Hartshorne, et at) have frequently considered birdsong as a form of music. Thus, my research examined documentary outcomes from research into birdsong in the form of analysis of recordings, and critical scrutiny of sonographs. Birds `perform' in varying degrees of tonal, atonal and microtonal systems. The research paralleled these treatments of pitch and harmony. It also addressed issues of structure, dynamics, timbre, rhythm and the physical aspects of delivery with the intention of devising a new `method' for the generation of a new music for the instrument. The research has of course been polymodal and interdisciplinary. It consisted of the following methodological, practical and theoretical domains, namely: • critical and analytical readings in the science of ornithology; especially birdsong • critical and analytical readings in historical models for performance on the baroque flute; • field-studies in the form of recordings and notational transcriptions (via Messiaen and Cowie, et al) of birdsong; • practical experiments as a soloist (improviser) together with collaborative, experimental and practical research with an ensemble and/or another baroque flautist. The purpose of this research was to find new techniques for contemporary musicians, accompanied by a body of writing that embodies a kind of treatise on the instrument with potential for use by other contemporary musicians. Thus, the written thesis, together with recordings of experiments, improvisations and concert-performance should be considered as a collective body of new knowledge in relation to performance on the baroque flute in particular, but with potential for use by other (or all) musical instruments. My findings are that: • a new performance technique is required as a result of a study of birdsong and with the effect of producing a vastly extended repertoire of effects and pitch frequencies on the instrument; • this new technique generates a new musical language particularly in respect of treatments of microtonality; new breathing and fingering techniques; • the technique is transferable by teaching and demonstration to other performers and of potential use for contemporary composers writing for the instrument; • these new techniques were enhanced (if not made entirely possible) by field-studies and cross-disciplinary (arts/sciences) and illustrate the potency of cross-field research in the generation of new music. The principal outcome of my research was the development of a system of playing that has now been named by me as ecosonic performance. It is so-named, because the performance-techniques developed are based on a phenomenological study of the ecology of sound in birds; themselves already ecosonic performers. This written thesis is a documentation of my modalities of research, experimentation and practice. It is designed in the form of a commentary/treatise, and should be considered as a form of `primer', not only for the baroque flute, but also for the further investigation of the performance-capabilities of any musical instrument

Affect is no crime – Technical and aesthetic perspectives on the contemporary traverso repertoire

The Early Music movement has long been the subject of vigorous scholarly debate, especially since its entry into wider public consciousness towards the end of the 1970s. But the growing body of new music composed for period instruments since that time has, until recently, received little attention. A particular beneficiary of this practice has been the traverso, which offers the contemporary composer a rich palette of timbres, a diverse array of articulations, variable types of vibrato and a considerable versatility in embracing extended techniques. This dissertation considers new music for the traverso from the perspectives of history and aesthetics on the one hand, and of technique and performance practice on the other. The first chapter situates the phenomenon of new works for period instruments within the wider context of historically informed performance, a movement that has itself attracted the labels of both ‘modernist’ and ‘postmodernist’. The second chapter sets out the arsenal of extended techniques in commonest use on the traverso, exploring both the technique of their production on the instrument (their ‘effect’ and how to produce it) and their expressive function (their ‘affect’) in the context of twentieth- and twenty-first-century works. The third chapter analyses specific selected works from the instrument’s new music repertory, exploring both their technical means and processes (whether minimalism, microtonality, live electronics or algorithmic composition) and their aesthetic motivations (for example, with the postmodern irony of Jukka Tiensuu or the postimpressionism of Jacqueline Fontyn). While some of these works embrace the instrument’s stylistic and organological heritage, through the use of quotations from Baroque music or the re-appropriation of its genres and instrumental combinations, others do not, instead placing it in the context of a radically new aesthetic and/or an innovative soundscape. As the conclusion sets out, all this renders more problematic the task of situating new music for the traverso within contemporary culture, whether as a modernist, a postmodernist or a late modernist phenomenon. Presented along with the dissertation is a CD recording by the author and his ensemble Europa Ritrovata (released in 2019 on the Arcana/Outhere Music label) which features a number of the works discussed. Also included is an appendix listing more than 150 works composed for the traverso over the past four decades

Compositions created with constraint programming

This chapter surveys music constraint programming systems, and how composers have used them. The chapter motivates and explains how users of such systems describe intended musical results with constraints. This approach to algorithmic composition is similar to the way declarative and modular compositional rules have successfully been used in music theory for centuries as a device to describe composition techniques. In a systematic overview, this survey highlights the respective strengths of different approaches and systems from a composer's point of view, complementing other more technical surveys of this field. This text describes the music constraint systems PMC, Score-PMC, PWMC (and its successor Cluster Engine), Strasheela and Orchidée -- most are libraries of the composition systems PWGL or OpenMusic. These systems are shown in action by discussing the composition process of specific works by Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi, Magnus Lindberg, Örjan Sandred, Torsten Anders, Johannes Kretz and Jonathan Harvey

Fretless Architecture: An Exploration of the Fretless Electric Guitar

The main focus of my post-doctoral research addresses the development of new techniques and original notation, specific to the fretless electric guitar: the incorporation of improvised passages within through-written material; the use of an array of effects pedals, loops and Ebow etc.; and the use of the instrument in a variety of contexts. In addition I work with several Iranian traditional/popular music crossover projects and an improvisation based trio in which I utilise the fretless electric guitar. This research and practical experience has enabled the exploration of new timbre possibilities and the development of performance repertoire for fretless electric guitar. Last year I released an international call for solo fretless electric guitar scores, in conjunction with Colchester New Music. This allowed me to work closely with composers in order to develop new repertoire for, and explore the potential of this new and exciting instrument. A live performance and recording(s) of a selection of the entries took place in November 2015 at Colchester Arts Centre where five submissions from the call were premiered. This lecture-recital will include performances of several extracts from these pieces for solo fretless electric guitar; specifically those that best demonstrate the fretless qualities of the instrument and discoveries of new techniques, sounds and approaches to notation. I will also discuss the challenges encountered during the project with particular reference to practice, new techniques, and notational devices. The performance will also include a premier of Divisions 2 composed by Andrew Hall, a longer piece written specifically for the IGRC conference, built upon the findings and outcomes from the previous call for scores

Audio-scores, a resource for composition and computer-aided performance

This submission investigates computer-aided performances in which musicians receive auditory information via earphones. The interaction between audio-scores (musical material sent through earpieces to performers) and visual input (musical notation) changes the traditional relationship between composer, conductor, performer and listener. Audio-scores intend to complement and transform the printed score. They enhance the accuracy of execution of difficult rhythmic or pitch relationships, increase the specificity of instructions given to the performer (for example, in the domain of timbre), and may elicit original and spontaneous responses from the performer in real-time. The present research is inspired by, and positions itself within traditional European notational practices. Through a reflection on the nature and function of notation in a variety of repertoires, this study examines how my own compositional research – and its reliance on audio-scores— relates to and differs from the models considered. Following the realisation of pieces investigating complex rhythms and the use of recorded samples as borrowed/found material, results have proven to be highly effective with a group of vocalists, with works in which audio-scores facilitated the precise realisation of microtonal material. Audio-scores also proved particularly useful in sitespecific ‘immersive’ concerts/installations. In these settings, audio-scores mitigate challenges associated with placing musicians at an unusual distances from one another, e.g. around the audience. This submission constitutes an original contribution to knowledge in the field of computer-aided performance in that it demonstrates how musical notation and current ubiquitous audio technologies may be used in tandem in the conception and performance of new works. Recent findings include a Web application currently being developed at IRCAM. The application is based on a local server and allows the synchronous delivery of audio/screen-scores via the browser of the performers’ smartphones, tablets, or computers. Keywords: audio-score, click track, composition, computeraided performance, earpiece, microtonality, music, notation, performance, screen-score, server, voice

Compositions created with constraint programming

This chapter surveys music constraint programming systems, and how composers have used them. The chapter motivates and explains how users of such systems describe intended musical results with constraints. This approach to algorithmic composition is similar to the way declarative and modular compositional rules have successfully been used in music theory for centuries as a device to describe composition techniques. In a systematic overview, this survey highlights the respective strengths of different approaches and systems from a composer's point of view, complementing other more technical surveys of this field. This text describes the music constraint systems PMC, Score-PMC, PWMC (and its successor Cluster Engine), Strasheela and Orchidée -- most are libraries of the composition systems PWGL or OpenMusic. These systems are shown in action by discussing the composition process of specific works by Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi, Magnus Lindberg, Örjan Sandred, Torsten Anders, Johannes Kretz and Jonathan Harvey

Premier Performance: Divisions 2 – for solo fretless electric guitar | composed by Hall, A

World premier performance of Divisions 2 – for solo fretless electric guitar, composed by Andrew Hall