The composer Sebastian Raval (?-1604) published seven music books between 1593 and 1600, featuring genres such as motets, madrigals, canzonettas, lamentations and ricercars. After some years in Urbino and Rome, he ended up his days as chapelmaster of the Royal Chapel in Palermo, being praised by his contemporaries. Nonetheless his output has received little attention in modem times. On the contrary, his participation in two musical contests (the first in Rome, in ca. 1592-95, with Giovanni Maria Nanino and Francesco Soriano; the second in Palermo, in 1600, with Achille Falcone) has become the main area of interest. He has been depicted as an arrogant individual, outrageously behaved in the contests with a manifest lack of capability as composer. This view has discouraged further examination of his music. Chapter 1 examines how this narrative started and evolved. It thoroughly reviews the events at the time and later on. The study reveals an overconfident personality when involved in contests, but also an overall positive view from most of his peers. Moreover it shows that the contests did not have any effect on Raval's reputation at the time. Interestingly, it proves that the accepted view in modem times was fabricated by Giuseppe Baini in his famous essay on Palestrina (Memorie storico-critiche della vita e delle opere di Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, 1828). Since then, it has been passed on and enhanced uncritically. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the assessment of Raval's music in order to establish where it really stands. The research shows the composer's interest in experimentation, which results in an original and bold approach to composition. This interest plus his awareness of the most progressive tendencies of the time facilitated the transformation produced in hjs style, from a more traditional polyphonic writing in his beginnings to the concertato style adopted in his last book.

This dissertation investigates the thought and the musical and artistic aesthetic of the French-American composer Dane Rudhyar (1895-1985). Seeking justification for his views and aesthetic in a variety of areas and distrusting both rationalism and mysticism exclusively in their own terms, Rudhyar chose an eclectic path. The qualities in his musical, visual, literary, philosophical and astrological work come not just from certain late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century French and German sources, but also from the Orient (particularly India and Japan), and from the early idealism and optimism of the New World. The multi-faceted nature of his work and life also reflects his philosophy of Wholeness, i. e. the dynamic interplay between Multiplicity and Unity. During my research, I have undertaken the tasks of gathering together the hugely disparate body of Rudhyar's (philosophical, musical, visual, astrological and literary) works, and of investigating what stands behind his vision. While the content of this study is not intended to follow any chronological order, the principal views of Rudhyar have often affected the general flow and layout of the dissertation, which is structured in three large parts. The first deals with Rudhyar's European background and his `seed' philosophy. The second is an examination of Rudhyar's fascination with the Orient and its conceptual ramifications. The third evaluates Rudhyar's American identity against the background of some of the social and cultural overtones that shaped the United States, particularly up until World War II. In the musical discussions of this dissertation, emphasis has been placed on his piano music; works examined include Transmutation, Three Early Pieces, Theurgy and Three Melodies (for flute with piano and cello accompaniment). These analytical sections will be presented in the first and second parts and are not intended to be comprehensive accounts of the compositions in question but merely illustrations of the relationship between idea and realisation

This dissertation examines embodied experience in Odissi, a classical Indian dance. In particular, it investigates how experiences of body, mind, identity and self are shaped by dance practices and discourses, and informed by values and meanings which are considered culturally specific. In order to achieve this goal, this research involves dance practitioners who both do and do not ascribe themselves to the cultural context with which the dance is associated. The purpose is to understand whether or not Odissi dancers share similar ways of making sense of their embodied experience, and to investigate the extent this shared embodied culture is shaped by training and performative practice. This research focuses on the common aspects of dancers’ embodied experience, at the same time discussing the tensions that characterise practices and discourses about dance. It especially examines how these tensions reflect relations of power based on gender, ethnicity and artistic expertise, and how aesthetic discourses and artistic practices are woven together with cultural ethics. In other words, this dissertation investigates on the one hand how cultural categories inform embodied experience, and on the other hand how dance practitioners ‘inflect’ these categories to make sense of their own experiences and to question the inclusion of certain subjects in the practice of dance.

This thesis constitutes the first comprehensive study of the life and work of Carmelo Pace (1906-1993), one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century Maltese music. Pace’s extensive output includes contributions to every major genre, including operas, large-scale choral works, symphonies, concertos, and much chamber music. The compositional idiom of some of these works departed radically from the conservative idioms employed by his Maltese predecessors, who mostly confined themselves to writing Catholic liturgical music in a conservative tonal idiom. Working largely in isolation, Pace evolved a complex post-tonal language which evinces similarities with the styles of Schoenberg, Bartók, Hindemith and other leading modernist figures. The opening chapter sketches the social and cultural context in which Pace worked, as well as the development of the art music tradition in Malta into the twentieth century. Chapter 2 assembles such information as is known about Pace’s life and presents an overview of his career. An important subsidiary focus of these chapters is to depict the rather impoverished and culturally marginalised nature of Maltese musical life at this period and describe the challenges that these conditions created for Pace and his contemporaries. The remaining five chapters provides an overview of Pace’s creative contributions to major genres: orchestral and concertante works; chamber music; keyboard works; choral and vocal works; and stage works. The principal focus is on his post-tonal works, which represent his most noteworthy creative achievements. Representative examples of these works, including Piano Sonata No. 2 and String Quartet No. 7, are analysed in depth to illustrate key features of Pace’s post-tonal musical language and approach to formal organization.

This dissertation examines the historical process of assimilation of rock musical idioms in five European countries: Britain, France, Germany (East and West), Greece, and Italy in the period between 1955 and 1985. Taking a comparative approach, it is argued that the process of assimilation unfolds in a number of distinct stages that can be clearly identified in each of these five countries, albeit with differences due to the particularities of each country’s pre-existing popular music culture, political conditions, and media structure. I propose that there are four main stages that can be identified: (1) a period of reception when rock’n’roll was largely enjoyed and copied as a fad of foreign origin; (2) a period of more creative imitation where an imitative rock idiom arose within each country, partly in response to media efforts to institutionalize and domesticate it, and partly in response to the influence of the ‘British Invasion’; (3) a period of development characterized by a self-conscious blending of indigenous elements with rock idioms; and finally, (4) a point where the assimilation of rock music finally becomes more intuitive, rock idioms freely interacting with distinctive national/indigenous features to produce new hybrids. By taking an overarching socio-cultural approach to popular music and its development which emphasizes both top-down (i.e., institutionalized) as well as bottom-up (e.g., underground) musical activities, this study examines the factors that led to the full assimilation of what was initially American rock’n’roll through tracing the changes that occurred in the popular music contexts of each of these five European countries during these four phases. It is argued that the full assimilation of rock idioms led to the creation of new hybrid musical languages that, despite the features they have in common, nevertheless also carry the particularities of their specific national contexts in which socio-political situations, nation-state policies, economic conditions, and the everyday activities of the people exist with and in relation to an ever-present, shared and, most importantly, imagined historical and cultural past.

Messiaen’s highly influential Quatre études de rythme and Livre d’orgue are regarded as seminal works in the development of Total Serialism. Frequently labelled as ‘experimental’, the works appear to represent a radical shift in Messiaen’s compositional aesthetics. Drawing on Messiaen’s analyses in the Traité de rythme, this thesis assesses the Quatre études and Livre d’orgue as a response to the resurgence of interest in serialism that happened after World War II. The analyses discuss and assess Messiaen’s new techniques but will also show that some of these have antecedents in practices developed by Messiaen earlier in the 1940s. Therefore, despite their apparent abstraction or asceticism, on one level the works can be seen as a logical development of Messiaen’s compositional language. Because of the explosive impact of Mode de valeurs et d’intensités, it is important to place the études and Livre d’orgue in the context of the development of Occidental music in the twentieth century, and in the context of Messiaen’s quintessential style as it was by the mid 1940s. The first half of the thesis, therefore, discusses issues surrounding the development of musical language and style in the twentieth century, Messiaen’s quintessential language, the renaissance of the Second Viennese School, and the pressures exerted by the emerging new generation of composers. These are all integral to understanding the composition of Messiaen’s experimental works, and an awareness of the people and events that shaped Messiaen’s life during this period also sheds light on ‘why’ Messiaen composed the études and Livre d’orgue. In order to determine what did or did not influence Messiaen, the thesis draws on theories of influence developed in art and literature, before highlighting experiences (positive and negative) that were influential in shaping the future direction of Messiaen’s musical language and, by implication, the future of twentieth-century music.

Algorithmic procedures have been applied in computer music systems to generate compositional products using conventional musical formalism, extensions of such musical formalism and extra-musical disciplines such as mathematical models. This research investigates the applicability of such algorithmic methodologies for real-time musical composition, culminating in Genesis, a multi-functional real-time computer music system written for Mac OS X in the SuperCollider object-oriented programming language, and contained in the accompanying DVD. Through an extensive graphical user interface, Genesis offers musicians the opportunity to explore the application of the sonic features of real-time sound-objects to designated generative processes via different models of interaction such as unsupervised musical composition by Genesis and networked control of external Genesis instances. As a result of the applied interactive, generative and analytical methods, Genesis forms a unique compositional process, with a compositional product that reflects the character of its interactions between the sonic features of real-time sound-objects and its selected algorithmic procedures. Within this thesis, the technologies involved in algorithmic methodologies used for compositional processes, and the concepts that define their constructs are described, with consequent detailing of their selection and application in Genesis, with audio examples of algorithmic compositional methods demonstrated on the accompanying DVD. To demonstrate the real-time compositional abilities of Genesis, free explorations with instrumentalists, along with studio recordings of the compositional processes available in Genesis are presented in audiovisual examples contained in the accompanying DVD. The evaluation of the Genesis system’s capability to form a real-time compositional process, thereby maintaining real-time interaction between the sonic features of real-time sound objects and its selected algorithmic compositional methods, focuses on existing evaluation techniques founded in HCI and the qualitative issues such evaluation methods present. In terms of the compositional products generated by Genesis, the challenges in quantifying and qualifying its compositional outputs are identified, demonstrating the intricacies of assessing generative methods of compositional processes, and their impact on a resulting compositional product. The thesis concludes by considering further advances and applications of Genesis, and inviting further dissemination of the Genesis system and promotion of research into evaluative methods of generative techniques, with the hope that this may provide additional insight into the relative success of products generated by real-time algorithmic compositional processes.

Portfolio Contents: 1. Ubi Caritas 2009 - for Violin & Piano 4.36 2. String Quartet 2010 - for String Quartet 5.15 3. Echoes of Poems & Prose 2010 - for small ensemble 32.45 4. Fountains 2011 - for String Quartet 4.45 5. Stato di Cambiamento 2012 - for large ensemble 5.10 6. Triptych 2012 - for small ensemble 5.20 7. Divergenza 2013 - for large orchestra 33.12 Total time 91.03 Other musical examples (not part of the portfolio) Sette archi spezzati 2013 - for small ensemble 5.28 This portfolio has three principal themes. The first, explored with the discussion of Ubi Caritas and the (2010) String Quartet, concerns the interpretation of harmony; that is harmony, plainly being the vertical component in music but having an inbuilt propensity for horizontal movement, including line and counterpoint. In echoes of Poems & Prose, there is a disregard for any horizontal reasoning, harmony is constrained to the point of isolation and focus fundamentally shifts to the chord as 'object'. I consider this 'objective' sense in detail, in subsequent music in this portfolio. A second theme hinges on a discussion of 'musical material' (the term devised by Theodor Adorno); this considered alongside Samuel Beckett's description of a relationship, between 'mess and confusion' (Beckett's terms for material) and the 'form' that contains it. In Echoes of Poems & Prose, I consider material explicitly, in particular the singular sound. With Fountains and Stato di Cambiamento control of the sounds and their overall architecture become increasingly obscure, with issues around form, substantively re-defining the compositional process. A third theme is the consideration of aspects of structure, which become of particular significance in the final pieces Triptych and Divergenza (the term 'structure' being as defined by John Cage). In Triptych, exploration is made of a confining form into which structural material grows; material that yields intensely colourful musical moments. In the final piece Divergenza, the Fibonacci sequence applies a vice-like grip on the material, but as I remove the conceptual dependence on this sequence, the music's intrinsic characteristics of rhythm and character grow to become of central importance.

The following commentaries will examine my recent music from both technical and aesthetic viewpoints, focusing in particular on my exploration of both harmonic permutation fields and polyrhythmic space, and the various ways in which these have been used to create harmonic/temporal networks as raw material for composition. Whilst investigating the development and subsequent interactions of these two techniques, the commentary will also consider how this approach has evolved organically from the desire to create pre-compositional material which is both flexible and simple to define, but which also has the potential for diverse compositional outcomes, providing the composer a rich seam of material to work during the compositional process. In the interest of clarity, we will consider the harmonic and temporal aspects of my approach separately in sections 2.0 and 2.1, respectively, leaving section 2.2 to outline a more unified conception of working methods which have resulted from this research, building on the ideas presented previously.

This thesis addresses the issue of the modernist musical artwork, specifically in terms of the spatialization of musical time, in aesthetic and music-analytic terms. Firstly, it focuses on the notion of musique informelle as it was expounded in Adorno’s essay ‘Vers une musique informelle,’ (1961) and its place in Gianmario Borio’s elaboration of this in terms of an aesthetics of the informel. Secondly, it proposes a further expansion of these aesthetics via a double strategy: a comparative reading of Walter Benjamin’s critique of philosophies of time (including the work of Henri Bergson), language and objects, and furthermore a reconceptualization of both Adorno’s and Borio’s aesthetics in terms of a new theory of the object (as sound-object) in light of a new reading strategy. This reading is based on Walter Benjamin’s notion of the dialectical image, which proposes a new form of philosophical interpretation. The theorizations of the sound-object and the dialectical image furnish a basis for a re-conceptalization of the (in)formel, allowing for the interpretative reading of the music of three composers in particular: Edgard Varèse, Morton Feldman and Iannis Xenakis. Particularly, the study of a number of their works, including Intégrales (Varèse), On Time and the Instrumental Factor and Words and Music (Feldman), and Duel (Xenakis), reveals what Adorno terms their (truth) content, in their mediation of rationalization and intuition. Finally, it is argued that these modernist works can in turn bring new insights into Adorno’s aesthetics of the modernist work of art.