The portfolio contains various works which explore the interplay between live performance of electroacoustic music and performance of pre-written work. Control of real-time parameters in computer generated music is now so prevalent that it can be used in the compositional process. This shift in possibilities is the focus of this commentary. It is not the intention of this commentary to either tell the reader how to interpret the music or to discuss aesthetic issues. This commentary should be used more like a construction manual to aid the listener where they might not be familiar with the concepts and techniques employed in the music. The introduction sets out the music aims, the conclusion explains how these aims are achieved in various ways and each chapter in between focuses on a different piece in the portfolio.

This thesis represents the results of a theoretical and practical investigation of acoustic and electro-acoustic elements of Western music at the start of the twentyfirst century, with specific attention to soundscapes. A commentary on the development of soundscapes is drawn from a multidisciplinary overview of concepts of time, followed by an examination of concepts of time in music. As a response to Jonathan Kramer's concept of 'vertical' music (a characteristic aesthetic of which is an absence of conventional harmonic teleology), particular attention is paid to those theories of multiple nested temporalities which have been referred to by Kramer in support of non-teleological musical structures. The survey suggests that new musical concepts, such as vertical music, have emerged from sensibilities resulting from the musical and associated styles of minimalism, and represent an ontological development of aesthetics characteristic of the twentieth century. An original contention of the debate is that innovations in the practice of music as the result of technological developments have led to the possibility of defining a methodology of process in addition to auditive strategies, resulting in a duality defined as 'tempomorphic'. Further observations are supplied, using findings derived from original creative practical research, to define tempomorphic performance, which complete the contribution to knowledge offered by the investigation. Tempomorphism, therefore, is defined as a duality of process and audition: as auditive tool, tempomorphic analysis provides a listening strategy suited to harmonically static music; as a procedural tool, it affords a methodology based primarily on duration.

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In spite of the current upsurge of interest in the field of rural church music in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there is surprisingly little exhaustive material dealing with one particular area of the country. Research from the early part of this century covers the West Country and Sussex, and the concensus has always been that these areas were the strongest in the tradition of local psalmody. This dissertation attempts to redress the balance by considering the choir-band in the Eastern Counties (the East Midlands, East Anglia and Mid-Anglia). The county of Northamptonshire is given particular consideration, and may be considered to be a 'typical' English county; this may show that this genre of music is very much more widespread than was formerly thought. The thesis describes the state of the late eighteenth-century Church, and discusses the role of music in the service, the situation of the choir-band and methods of payment. Examples of local psalmody in Northamptonshire are given, and the instrumentation of the choir-bands is studied, by reference to sources such as churchwardens' account books. Conclusions are drawn about instrumental trends, dispersion and influence. The lasting significance of the choir-band movement is also considered.

This thesis concerns aesthetic responses to music, and is divided into four main parts, with each comprising an initial literature review and subsequent empirical studies. Part A describes 5 studies which employed conventional laboratory techniques to investigate how theories of aesthetic response might be extended to explanations of emotional responses to music and liking for musical styles. This part of the thesis also discusses how these theories might be reconciled. In contrast, Parts B-D of the thesis provide several examples of how responses to music in the real world are not made in the 'social vacuum' of conventional laboratory research, but are instead linked inextricably to the context of musical behaviour. Part B reports 7 studies which investigate the relationship between music and the immediate listening situation. These demonstrate that through variables such as 'appropriateness', musical preference may interact with the environment in which it is experienced. Part B also investigates the relative roles of arousal- and cognitive-based factors in this, and suggests that music is selected to as to optimise responses to the listening situation. Part C investigates two sources of extra-musical information, namely stereotyping and the physical attractiveness of music performers. Although some research has been carried out on conformity and prestige effects on musical preference, the two studies in this part of the thesis indicate that other types of information may also be important social features of people's musical behaviour. Finally, Part D reports three studies concerning artistic eminence and acculturational factors. These demonstrate a considerable consensus between several means of measuring artistic eminence; that this consensus breaks down to some extent as a result of cultural factors; that archival data sources can reveal several interesting cultural trends in eminence; and that there are age differences in tolerance for musical styles. These three studies indicate that the broader culture in which people develop and live also influences musical behaviour. More generally, the research reported in this thesis suggests that although context-independent laboratory studies can be informative in their own right, responses to music also seem related to their social psychological, real-world context.

Despite their importance, debates on the global culture industry and its effects on local cultures have often been framed by the dichotomy between global capitalist producers and local romantic consumers, which fails to locate dialogues between production and consumption, globalisation and localisation, at a specific historical and geographical crossroad. This thesis attempts to assess this crossroad, focusing on the construction of hip-hop scenes in Paris and Tokyo. It pursues two routes of inquiry. Firstly, it tries to trace history and geography in the two cities of street music: the music labelled as 'delinquent' while disposed to accumulate specific capital. How has this 'street' been mediated by the globalising music industries? How has such global mediation been locally naturalised through oppositions between the 'commercial' and the 'authentic'? Secondly, through fieldwork, it seeks to detect a series of taxonomic conflicts among music industry personnel regarding hip-hop's local legitimacy. How are both the globally disseminated notion of black American 'street' as hip-hop's origin and the locally accessible history and geography of 'street' informing the hip hop scene in each of the two cities? How is hip-hop understood globally unifying and locally diversifying at once? As the two routes intersect, it turns out that the local hip-hop scenes cannot be explained simply as a product of capitalist manipulation or romantic resistance. Hip-hop has transformed the music industries in the two cities, yet its resistance is also implicated in modem technologies and industries as it has instituted its own network of cultural intermediaries. Despite (and because of) its oppositional disposition, hip-hop contradictorily reproduces modern symbolic orders. This being the case, the role of the music and related media industries should urgently be re-conceptualised for a further understanding of contemporary media and popular culture. This study is a small contribution to this issue.

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This study examines C-pop (Chinese pop). It contains three parts, Part One describes the changes in C-pop from the 1985 to the present, Part Two deals with how C-pop changed in terms of its musical texts and Part Three elucidates why it changed culturally. As a whole, it also provides a case study that allows us to approach the 'popular'I'pop' dichotomy from perspective of a change in musicality (way of being musical) from a music-maker-centric (MMC) system to a music-receiver-centric (MRC) system. I have drawn on the dual experience base of being a native Chinese and an overseas-based researcher, generating a critical-ethnomusicological perspective throughout. Part One of the thesis considers a selection of soundscapes that delineate changing trends in Chinese popular music from 1985 on. In the first chapter, the emergence of C-pop in the 1980s and early 1990s is identified and assessed. Chapter 2 looks at the reshaping of the industry from 1996 on, analysing also the rise of new media for popular music during this period, most obviously television and the internet. Part Two looks in more depth at the linguistic (Chapter 3) and vocal (Chapter 4) codes embedded in the music. The writing here focuses on the relationship between producers and receivers of C-pop and between the music itself and receivers. Chapter 5 underlines this latter emphasis by critically reflecting on the ways in which songs are structured and produced. Finally, Part Three employs a tripartite model of music, music-maker and music-receiver to attend in tum to fan culture (Chapter 6), the roles of musicians (Chapter 7) and the operation of producers and managers in the music industry (Chapter 8). These analyses show why C-pop has developed in the ways in which it has, the ongoing power struggle between the audience and musician-between those holding a mass concept and those holding an elite concept- determining the musicality of C-pop in present-day mainland China.