This portfolio of thirteen recorded works was composed as an investigation into the application of generative processes to electroacoustic music, paying particular attention to the use of fuzzy logic and the rule-based constraint of chance events. These works were developed by a rolling process of program design and musical composition, focusing on two areas: the generation and transformation of large groups of sounds within a multi-dimensional parameter space for acousmatic composition (using the author’s software, Audio Spray Gun) and the real-time selection of sounds using audio descriptors, principally for live performance by instrument and electronics. Later stages of the project attempted to unite these processes in two ways: by the agent-based generation of large sound-groups for multichannel audio from live instruments or pre-recorded audio datasets and by the software generation of such groups for fixed-media composition using trajectories and transformations in ‘timbre space’. An accompanying document charts the development of these works with a programme note, technical discussion and performance records for each, along with spectrograms and scores as appropriate. It also describes the programming methods used and discusses the implications and limitations of these approaches, particularly for object-based spatial music and timbre selection.

Sound propagates through space as a series of vibrations which are mediated, perceived and interpreted by the listening body. Whilst the body receives the physicality of sound, we predominantly focus on our listening experience through audition. In this work, I propose approaches to employing haptics, or vibration technologies, as a mechanism through which we can extend our experience of sound across the body and achieve a greater control of its physical presence. I will discuss ideas pertaining to sound as a physical and embodied practice, and the ways that I have explored this through developing conceptual systems relating sonic and physical materials. During the production of this work, themes of embodiment, mediation and immersion emerge which are unpacked through this commentary. Many of the works in this portfolio employ an audio and a haptic element that controls sound and vibration in synchrony, with the physical element rendered on bespoke haptic displays. A latter work explores the development of and performances with an algorithmic language for choreography. In this commentary, I reflect on each individual piece, documenting the process of making and subsequent outcomes to my creative thinking. Overall this project is underlined by a reflexive methodology where each new piece of practice influences the formation of the next—revealing new opportunities, concepts and technological approaches. I do not present a framework for the development of audio-haptic works, instead, I document and reflect on the processes through which my own practice has found connections, tensions and opportunities between the two forms. I conclude that whilst the inclusion of haptics heavily mediates and reconfigures the experience of listening, it can function as an immersive addition to sound that provokes presence, aura and tangibility in abstraction.

The mid-19th century saw the rise and fall of performing editions, musical scores which a respected performer has marked up with all of the advice considered necessary for a tasteful performance of the piece. This editorial goal gradually gave way to the competing ideal of preserving the composer's markings exclusively, which still guides editorial practice today and is seen as synonymous with good taste and respect for the composer's work. While performing editions can tell us an enormous amount about 19th-century performing practices, as well as about the notational choices of 19th-century composers, we cannot learn from them without first confronting the difference in taste, not only between our playing styles and the editors’, but also between the ideals that drove their editorial work and the modern ideal of a good edition. This is a practice-led study of the much-maligned performing editions of the cellist, Friedrich Grützmacher (1832-1903). Now derided as a musical vandal, Grützmacher was seen in his day as a serious and noble artist, respected as a performer and highly sought-after as a teacher. The first section of this thesis establishes him as a reliable model of good taste within a 19th-century German tradition of music making, referred to at the time as 'classical', that surrounds the compositions of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms. The second part of the thesis explores the performing practice implications of his richly annotated editions and transcriptions for the cello, with research questions centred around the theme of 'decoding' Grützmacher's style: I wished to find the expressive grammar that directed his fingering choices (especially connected to portamento), his bowings and bow distribution, and his sense of timing. Research methods include statistical studies of Grützmacher's markings within specific editions, as well as comparisons of these findings with treatises, letters, memoirs, reviews, piano rolls, and early acoustic recordings from within the same musical tradition. In the third section of the thesis, I apply my new sense of Grützmacher's expressive grammar to a piece which he never edited, but was premiered by two of his students: the Brahms Cello Sonata Op. 38. In this final project, I aim to reconcile my new instincts as a Grützmacher student with the professional pressures on modern historical performers, and I argue that such a reconciliation is possible and worth pursuing.

Over the course of the past thirty years, Sir Arthur Sullivan's reputation as the foremost British musician of the Victorian era has undergone a renaissance, particularly with regard to his work beyond his partnership with W.S. Gilbert. While many aspects of Sullivan's career have seen a re-evaluation, there are areas that have not, and which this thesis seeks to address: Sullivan's career as a conductor and his direction of the Leeds Triennial Musical Festival have been largely ignored, possibly because they do not fit into the expected framework of the life of a musician who is best known as a composer of comic operas. It is against this background that Sullivan's direction of the 1898 Leeds Festival is examined, together with its aftermath and his controversial dismissal in the late summer of 1899.Giventhe success that Sullivan had brought to Leeds, his popularity with audiences and performers alike, together with his proven abilities the Festival's General Conductor, his removal did not make sense. The circumstances surrounding this unanticipated event, the mythology that was constructed around it, and the deliberate denigration of Sullivan's reputation form the core of the enquiry. Finally, the turbulent decade that succeeded Sullivan's removal is investigated, following the fortunes of the Leeds Festival and the men who were central to it, before the Great War temporarily terminated its activities.

Music is viewed as conferring health benefits, with tempo being the most influential parameter for altering human physiology and psychology. However, this work has used stimuli that manipulate multiple musical parameters at a time. Therefore, this thesis investigated the effects of musical tempo manipulations on cardiovascular autonomic function and subjective responses. Tempo manipulations comprised of stepped (sudden) increases and decreases in the speed of a simple beat pattern and heart rate variability estimated autonomic balance. Shifts towards parasympathetic predominance occurred for the stepped decrease in tempo stimulus but not for the stepped increase in tempo. When using more musically sophisticated stimuli, greatest vagal tone occurred for the slowest tempo (60bpm) of the stepped decrease in tempo stimulus. Autonomic function did not differ between an experimental (melody and rhythm) and control group (rhythm only). However, the latter experienced greater subjective arousal than the former. Growing interest in wearable technologies led to the testing of a wearable device that combined relaxation music with transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation (tVNS). tVNS is a non-invasive neuromodulatory technique that administers small electrical impulses to the outer ear to stimulate the auricular vagus nerve. Both stimuli individually promote shifts towards parasympathetic predominance. It was anticipated that music combined with tVNS would elicit the greatest shifts towards parasympathetic predominance. However, the sham was equally as effective as music only, tVNS only, and their combination at altering autonomic activity. Autonomic responses to all stimuli employed in the thesis were predicted by baseline LF%. These findings suggest that music and wearables may be susceptible to placebo effects.

This commentary augments audio and video recordings that should be considered the essence of the study. The sound recordings comprise an original body of work that resulted from my interest in extending the possibilities of a standard drum set by augmenting it with electronics. It developed from an early interest in analogue, electroacoustic devices – such as the Dexion frames used by Tony Oxley and Paul Lytton to an engagement with digital electronics, specifically Max MSP, that was unknown to me at the outset of the study. The digital tools caused me to re-evaluate my thinking; to go beyond extending the sound-world at my disposal to engage with and consider artificial intelligence and the potential of creating a surrogate, software improviser with a degree of agency that challenged my thinking about human-computer interaction and confounded the issue of whether I was playing in a solo or duo setting. The commentary demonstrates the centrality of free improvisation to my approach and the recordings document my use of technologies, varying from the seemingly primitive (wooden beaters) to the apparently sophisticated (Max MSP) where I fully explore the affordances of each encounter.

This thesis has the purpose of demonstrating that to explore and investigate profoundly, and then to synthesise, a wide range of ideas leads to an enrichment of musical language. The more ideas are tested to their extremes, by extending them, opposing their preconditions, challenging them and transgressing predefined limits, the more extreme, and therefore profound, the investigations and explorations will be. The widest range of ideas reflects open-mindedness to the greatest number of possibilities. Synthesis represents coherence, the absorption and understanding of the ideas, and the potential for communication in a clear manner. This testing and then absorption, probing and then synthesising, is central to all human progress. By applying this method to music, and by possible implication to the other arts, the sciences and to other aspects of life (including politics), enrichment in the form of an extension of knowledge and awareness will be made possible. I show in six recent compositions which are the results of this research complex networks of synthesised interrelationships. The compositions stand as statements and symbols of the attempt at open-minded questioning that led to their creation. I introduce several new techniques into musical composition, attempts at further enrichment and complexity. Finally I show that it is possible to extend such synthesis even further, through the input of ideas from elsewhere, in this case the visual arts, theatre and film.

Heterophony, one of the fundamental forms of multilinear music, has hardly played a role in Western art music. Even after heterophonic music practices became known and were given their own term in the early twentieth century, the potential of heterophony as a way of multipart composing was seldom recognised, with some prominent exceptions including, Pierre Boulez, George Enescu, Ştefan Niculescu and William Sweeney. The present thesis is an examination of heterophony with the intention of making the phenomenon fruitful for my own composing. For this purpose, it was initially necessary to sharpen the term, which is often used vaguely and inconsistently in musicological literature. Through the evaluation of the various concepts of heterophony - from the introduction of the term into the musicological discourse (in 1901, by Carl Stumpf) up to the current state of research (Pärtlas 2016)-as well as through my own transcriptions and analyses of non-European and traditional heterophonic music, I arrived at a preliminary definition of heterophony which currently serves as the basis for my compositional work. The study identifies two types of heterophony: variant heterophony and ornamental heterophony. Both categories are based on 'labelled' or 'skeletal' melodies; ornamental heterophony, however, is sometimes also based on 'melodic patterns'. The main difference between the two types is that in variant heterophony some pitches of the basic melody are replaced by others in some of the parts involved, while in ornamental heterophony various forms of simultaneous ornamentation 'actualise' the otherwise unchanged skeletal melody. Paradoxically, the great difficulty in defining the boundaries between heterophony and related forms of multilinear music turns out to be a source of inspiration for my work as a composer. For this reason and because my concept of heterophony only gradually emerged in the course of my studies, not all of the compositions submitted are based on the definition mentioned above. Rather, as discussed more in depth in the second section of this thesis, the composition portfolio shows my path to a better understanding of heterophony.

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