This thesis examines the changes in the traditional music of Crete that have transpired in the twentieth century, particularly since the 1950's. Chapter One reviews the ethnomusicological, and to a lesser extent the anthropological, literature on the music of the island; it also presents a history of Cretan music over the centuries, with special reference to the impact of the long Turkish occupation. In addition, it describes what Cretan music is consisted of and also focuses on the 'mantinades', the musical instruments associated with the Cretan tradition and dance. Chapter Two discusses the particular difficulties encountered by the researcher in conducting fieldwork in Crete. It highlights issues such as ethnomusicology "at home", pre-fieldwork and fieldwork period. Chapter Three deals with the nature and structure of musical 'glendia' events which are of central importance in the musical life of the island. It also considers the ethnographer's practice of learning to perform Cretan dances as a research technique in ethnomusicology. Chapter Four surveys the music profession Crete, and the networks of Cretan musicians. Chapter Five examines the complexities of how Cretans understand the concept of "tradition" with respect to current music performance in Crete and the new genres that have emerged. Chapter Six provides the conclusions to the research.

Noise is ubiquitous, from the sound of cars in the street to the scrape of a cello bow on a string. Often noise is considered to be unwanted, an intrusion on an otherwise quiet life. Through a consideration of the thinking of Alain Badiou, and of the broad range of literature that deals with noise specifically, I dispute noise’s unwantedness, re-situating it as an integral, and therefore essential, part of being. The written portion of this project exists alongside a portfolio of compositions comprising solo and small chamber works together with a larger immersive-performance piece. The practice exists not as a complementary, but rather as an integral part of the research which posits that, as outlined by Badiou, truth is only attainable through the combination of philosophy and truth procedures.

Physical effort has often been regarded as a key factor of expressivity in music performance. Nevertheless, systematic experimental approaches to the subject have been rare. In North Indian classical (Hindustani) vocal music, singers often engage with melodic ideas during improvisation by manipulating intangible, imaginary objects with their hands, such as through stretching, pulling, pushing, throwing etc. The above observation suggests that some patterns of change in acoustic features allude to interactions that real objects through their physical properties can afford. The present study reports on the exploration of the relationships between movement and sound by accounting for the physical effort that such interactions require in the Dhrupad genre of Hindustani vocal improvisation. The work follows a mixed methodological approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse interviews, audio-visual material and movement data. Findings indicate that despite the flexibility in the way a Dhrupad vocalist might use his/her hands while singing, there is a certain degree of consistency by which performers associate effort levels with melody and types of gestural interactions with imaginary objects. However, different schemes of cross-modal associations are revealed for the vocalists analysed, that depend on the pitch space organisation of each particular melodic mode (rāga), the mechanical requirements of voice production, the macro-structure of the ālāp improvisation and morphological cross-domain analogies. Results further suggest that a good part of the variance in both physical effort and gesture type can be explained through a small set of sound and movement features. Based on the findings, I argue that gesturing in Dhrupad singing is guided by: the know-how of humans in interacting with and exerting effort on real objects of the environment, the movement–sound relationships transmitted from teacher to student in the oral music training context and the mechanical demands of vocalisation.

This thesis is an extended examination of a lithograph, dated 1826, purporting to show a meeting of the Canterbury Catch Club—a musical society which flourished in the early nineteenth century. A very large collection of documents relating to the Club, now held in the Cathedral Library and Archives and the city Library, is used extensively to interrogate the print in order to assess what it tells us about the social, historical and cultural context within which the Club members and musicians promoted, performed and consumed the music which was, ostensibly, the Club’s raison-d’être. The thesis begins with an iconographical study comparing the image with other representations of convivial song of the period, and with contemporary written accounts of such evenings to be found in diaries and other literature, to ascertain how accurate it might be in its depiction of gentlemen at such an evening as this. After this, the archival evidence is then used to scrutinise, in Part I, that which is clearly visible; in Part II, that which is less clearly drawn—the musicians; and finally, in Part III, those elements conspicuous by their absence. Part I thus makes clear that the image is intended to assert the professional and socio-cultural identity of the gentlemen shown in the picture, by dint of careful composition and adherence to matters of dress, consumption, gender definition, and cultural association. Part II uses both Club and Cathedral records to investigate the extent to which the musicians employed by the Club may—as was often the case—have sung in the Cathedral Choir, and contributes to scholarship on this subaltern group of men by the use of detailed reference to hitherto unseen archival records. Part III—not for the first time in the thesis—notes the absence of women, whether as audience or performer, and then proceeds to a searching analysis of the musical repertoire itself, discussing the instrumental and vocal music which made up the programme of a Club evening, arguing that the musical taste evidenced here speaks volumes for the process of aspirational embourgoisement at work in this print and in society at large. This work is substantiated by extensive transcription, cataloguing and documentation of the Club’s archive and repertoire. Further reference is made to the clues herein about another aspect of Club culture noticeably absent from this print: the libertine revelry of the later evening singing. This speaks to a central point of the thesis: that this “after-evening” behaviour is a fascinating relic of the manners and mores of the Georgian period which gave it birth, offering Club members an opportunity to indulge in convivial behaviours which were unacceptable in more public environments. The thesis argues that the image is a telling assertion of socio-political identity at a turbulent point in British history, proclaiming an emerging certain social and economic status but also testifying eloquently to the continuation of an older, alternative, convivial culture.

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Symphony--Piano concertante--Telynegion y maes--Divertimento for strings--Antiphon to the Holy Spirit--[The life and works of Bernard von Dieren - volume 3 is missing].

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Within the last century, composers including John Cage, Mauricio Kagel, Georges Aphergis or Michael Nyman, and movements such as the Futurists or later Fluxus have shown an increasing interest in a work’s performance itself and experimented with integrating performative and theatrical elements within their compositions in order to achieve a ‘theatricalisation of music’ (Kesting 1969). This focus on performances was preceded or paralleled within the theatrical arts and in a progression from dance to Dance Theatre, requiring actors and dancers to be increasingly creative and independent. Similarly, in this practice-based research the performer of a piece of instrumental music is regarded as a creative and independent source in addition to the composer. The research inquiry of this thesis is guided by the following three research questions: - How can performers of instrumental music be creative beyond the aural realisation of the score within a performative space? - With the performer’s body and own perspectives on the music as the starting point, what kind of techniques does the performer need for a creative embodied performance and which theatrical elements and techniques are accessible for the performing musician? - What kinds of methods are conducive to a process that leads to a creatively enhanced performance and what kind of interactivity between performer and work do they facilitate? The thesis investigates a practice evidenced by a set of case studies undertaken from 2001 to the present, which are described through their processes of development, their purpose within the research and their performances, documented on the enclosed DVD. The outcomes of this practice-based research and analysis contribute to the practice of performance and interpretation through a set of key protocols for practice as a suggested guide for performers of instrumental music intending to pursue a comparable path of interdisciplinary research on embodied performance its practice.

The aim of this investigation was to explore ways of using untranslated early medieval texts in contemporary musical composition, drawing on literature in Old English, medieval Irish, Old Norse and Middle Welsh. The ultimate goal of this research was to compose a chamber opera for three singers, ensemble and electronics. Despite focusing on the use of text, this is not a literary or linguistic research project. While a knowledge of languages, form and metre has been crucial to my work, the texts have been treated as an element of the creative compositional process. The music has not been written to exemplify text, but to explore and extrapolate the ideas that might arise from it. Moreover, although the texts under consideration were from early medieval northern Europe, the project did not address issues of historical performance practice. Neither was there any attempt to recreate a historical or imagined form of early music. Instead, the texts were used for the literary and sonic content that they provided. The musical language with which these ideas were expressed is my own, which owes its development both to contemporary music and to the legacy of the twentieth century. The first chapter introduces the background to the project, with reference to contemporary composers whose works have informed and influenced the development of my ideas. This is followed by a brief description of the major piece, a chamber opera for three singers, ensemble and electronics entitled The Difference Between Us. In order to hone and explore the various approaches that had the potential to be used in the chamber opera, it was necessary to compose a variety of supporting works. The first supporting work, We Are Apart; Our Song Together, is discussed in detail in Chapter Two, since the composition was included in its entirety as part of the final work. Additional supporting works are discussed in Chapter Three, with sections of this chapter devoted to the vocal, instrumental and electronic compositions of the portfolio. The ideas that were developed in these three compositional genres achieved synthesis in the final work, The Difference Between Us, which is discussed in Chapter Four. In writing The Difference Between Us, the supporting compositions provided invaluable preparatory research into the ways in which early medieval texts could shape the musical structure and content of the work at every level, from surface detail through to global structure. However, the use of untranslated texts in a chamber opera raised profound questions regarding communication and narrative. The form, structure and content of The Difference Between Us arose precisely as an attempt to answer these questions. Rather than limiting the scope of the chamber opera, the early medieval texts became the cornerstone of the musical structure and drama of the work. These conclusions are discussed and evaluated in Chapter Five.

The aim of Metta Vee is to explore stylistic metamorphosis in an extended cross-generic work for electroacoustic string ensemble which combines the rich vocabulary of string writing from the Western art tradition with that found in jazz, folk and rock music. In performance this is achieved by individually expressing and then fusing the associated playing styles. In a series of supporting works different aspects of cross-genre writing for strings are explored, both in scored and sonic pieces. The final composition, Metta Vee (a phonetic abbreviation of metamorphous violin) is an evolving landscape which travels through various styles whilst retaining cohesion in the overall design. It is, as expressed in the subtitle, a stylistic journey through a landscape of string. Two violin soloists, one acoustic and one electric, convey the more intricate details of stylistic fusion, exploiting the instrument’s technical capacities and broad repertoire. The electric solo part has been scored for a 5-string violin, incorporating the low viola C string in addition to the standard tuning. Opportunities for soloing and musical exchanges between the players have been designated within the main work to showcase the cross-stylistic performance aesthetic through a series of variations generated by repeated motifs. Metta Vee is a work that faces the challenge of mixing the tonal characteristics of the electric violin with the acoustic string world so the two may be not just individually showcased, but homogenized, creating a new sonority as well as stylistic fusion.