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This PhD focusses on the body of work that has emerged from the author’s compositional practice between 2008 and 2015. It tackles a range of issues including (dark) tourism, identity and remembrance, and the tensions between history, narrative and myth; from folklore practices to postwar Eastern Europe and the Holocaust. Three extended projects using field recordings and interviews as their primary source material are examined: a soundscape study of Padstow, a composition dealing with the soundscapes of historically-charged places, and an ongoing project that further explores issues of memory, narrative, and myth-making. Through a detailed contextual investigation of these sound-works, the text endeavours to provide a dialogue between the phonographies of the sites and voices featured in the compositions and the social, historical, political and economic forces that have contributed to the making (and metamorphosis) of these places and communities. The author develops a number of notions including the construction of schizo-narratives: an editing technique where fragments of interviews are reorganised to create unexpected and non-linear narratives, and sonic chorographies: the use of field recordings to represent not only the fragmentary delineations of a soundscape but also to operate a re-scaling of the elements depicted to highlight crucial aspects of the socio-political fabric of a specific place. These elements lead to an investigation of the territory of disembodied voices – the phenomenological mechanisms of interaction between disembodied voices and the sonic environment – as well as a reflection on the perception of acousmatic identities. From the multitude of conflicting histories that underpin the origins and beliefs associated with the Mayday festival to the problematic site transformations that have occurred in Krakow and Auschwitz as a result of the Holocaust tourist trade; from the dislocated narratives of ‘twin language’ to the imagined myths of the lost Jewish community of thirteenth century Hereford, this PhD endeavours to show how disembodied voices and soundscapes might be creatively and conceptually explored through plurality and contradiction, as a territory where no element is fixed, where no narrative is crystallised, where identities are in constant motion, where meaning is always transient.

This thesis examines performance style in commercial recordings of the works of Anton Webern. Considering style not as a ‘surface’ issue but one essential to questions of musical meaning, I explore the relationships between the sound of Webern recordings and the ways in which people have understood his music. This question is addressed from both historical and psychological perspectives and using both critical and empirical methodologies. In Chapter 1, I argue that Webern favoured a particular kind of pre-war performance style for his works, before moving on in Chapter 2 to an historical survey of Webern recordings and reception from the 1930s to the present day. I outline the idea, proposed by Timothy Day and others, that performers have moved away from the dry ‘pointillism’ of Robert Craft’s pioneering 1950s LP set towards a more ‘lyrical’ and ‘expressive’ Webern style. In Chapter 3, I analyse this trend in more detail and relate it to broader changes in twentieth-century performance styles and recording practices. Chapters 4 to 6 are case studies of particular passages or works by Webern based on recording data. Chapter 4 examines string quartet intonation in a passage from Op. 5 no. 5, Chapter 5 discusses timing in the first movement of the Op. 27 Piano Variations and Chapter 6 considers vocal portamento in recordings of the Op. 14 Trakl songs. The empirical results in each of these chapters are related to wider critical issues such as the ideological significance of equal temperament, the relationship between musical structure and expressive performance and the construction of a lyrical voice. Studies on music perception, record reviews and material from interviews with performers are used to inform discussions of the links between sound and meaning. An original and extensive Webern discography is included on the accompanying DVD.

This research proposes new approaches for computational identification of Persian musical modes. This involves constructing a database of audio musical files and developing computer algorithms to perform a musical analysis of the samples. Essential features, the spectral average, chroma, and pitch histograms, and the use of symbolic data, are discussed and compared. A tonic detection algorithm is developed to align the feature vectors and to make the mode recognition methods independent of changes in tonality. Subsequently, a geometric distance measure, such as the Manhattan distance, which is preferred, and cross correlation, or a machine learning method (the Gaussian Mixture Models), is used to gauge similarity between a signal and a set of templates that are constructed in the training phase, in which data-driven patterns are made for each dastgàh (Persian mode). The effects of the following parameters are considered and assessed: the amount of training data; the parts of the frequency range to be used for training; down sampling; tone resolution (12-TET, 24-TET, 48-TET and 53-TET); the effect of using overlapping or nonoverlapping frames; and silence and high-energy suppression in pre-processing. The santur (hammered string instrument), which is extensively used in the musical database samples, is described and its physical properties are characterised; the pitch and harmonic deviations characteristic of it are measured; and the inharmonicity factor of the instrument is calculated for the first time. The results are applicable to Persian music and to other closely related musical traditions of the Mediterranean and the Near East. This approach enables content-based analyses of, and content-based searches of, musical archives. Potential applications of this research include: music information retrieval, audio snippet (thumbnailing), music archiving and access to archival content, audio compression and coding, associating of images with audio content, music transcription, music synthesis, music editors, music instruction, automatic music accompaniment, and setting new standards and symbols for musical notation.

This thesis, comprising four empirical studies, investigates the process of co-performer empathy in expert ensemble playing. Following an extensive review of the existing literature relating to both optimal experiences of performance and empathy, it begins by probing the relationship between ensemble musicians’ optimal experiences of performance and their experiences of co-performer empathy through a series of focus group interviews. In addition to co-performer empathy, spontaneous interpretative flexibility (SIF) in performance is identified to be a central feature of optimal experiences of expert ensemble performance. Through observational case studies, involving video-recall, acoustic analyses, and heart-rate measures, a model of process of co-performer empathy and the related process of SIF is constructed. The final model shows co-performer empathy to be a cyclical process grounded in a pre-requisite shared approach, both to the music and to working together. It is often characterised by a special connection between players. It involves the identification of a co-performer’s expressive intention, followed by an appropriate expressive response. Co-performer empathy appears to be a context-specific form of musical empathy that emerges as a group process during ensemble playing, and does not seem to be directly related to trait empathy. Finally, from the findings of these empirical studies, potential techniques for strengthening co-performer empathy and the production of SIF in ensemble playing are proposed.

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of gesture and movement training for beginner children's choirs with regard to improving intonation and tone quality. A further aim was to determine whether movement training enhances gesture quality. This study also intended to explore the relationship between voice and gesture. Additionally, a series of teaching tools to train children with `effective' gestures and movements was developed. Fifty-three fifth grade students participated in the empirical investigations. They were randomly assigned into three groups: (1) Group 1- students who received no gesture and movement training; (2) Group 2- students who received gesture training, and (3) Group 3- students who received gesture and movement training. The instructional unit, consisting of two 40-minute sessions per week for 24 sessions, focused on vocal development. Each individual was pretested and posttested, and the three groups were pretested, mid-tested, and posttested. Three different groups each comprising of three experts were asked to judge both the children's individual and group performances in singing and gesture. Statistical analyses showed that the children who received gesture and/or movement training significantly performed better than those who did not both in `Intonation' and `Tone Quality'. Children who received movement training gained a significantly higher score on gesture quality. The results also showed that the relationship between voice and gesture was significantly correlated. In addition, the students sang significantly better with gesture. It was concluded that gesture training has a positive effect on improving children's intonation and tone quality. Furthermore, the combination of gesture and movement training could be a powerful teaching strategy in choral rehearsals.

The advent of Western influence has brought about many changes to Korean music. The most significant were the division of Korean musical culture into kugak (traditional Korean music) and yangak (Western music) and the rise of a new genre, ch'angjak kugak, "new compositions for traditional music". Kim Kisu, who was trained as a traditional court music performer in the early 20th century, was the first modem composer of music for traditional instruments. His music was written in staff notation incorporating various Western elements, including harmony, diatonic scales, and playing techniques based on Western instrument practices. Though he was trained as a court musician, his works demonstrated a desire to embrace Western culture and music in his compositions. Since Kim Kisu's innovations, many composers have been influential in the development of the genre. I focus on two of the most representative, Yi Sung-Chun and Yi Haeshik. Yi Sung-Chun, who is also a highly respectable educator, has sacrificed his musical life to expand the quantity and the quality of this genre. In the 1980s, he designed the improved 21-string kayagüm and has written significant and successful pieces for this instrument. His search for new sounds led him to break many of the old conventions surrounding traditional instruments, and to write more contemporary and modern music. Yi Haeshik, who is known for his use of the folk idiom in his works, has composed many pieces that borrow elements from traditional shamanistic music, sanjo, folksongs and more. His approach reflects a movement to find "Korean contemporary identity" within the folk tradition in Korea and other countries, and within the world of dance. The ch'angjak kugak genre has seen significant development in the years since its inception and the three composers I focus on - Kim Kisu, Yi Sung-Chun and Yi Haeshik - best demonstrate the progress of the genre

This study has been made necessary by the lack of an adequate political economy of opera, and related philosophical constructs, to take opera successfully into the twentyfirst century. Despite a history of crises and failure within the UK subsidized opera sector, scant attention has been paid to the theory of value in opera: a situation not aided by the scarcity and inconsistency of available data pertaining to the financial performance of opera companies and the sector as a whole. The study provides a fresh theoretical approach which will allow those parties with an interest in the artistic value and financial value issues posed by opera to find a common forum. The influence of relevant factors in the environment are discussed, including the trend towards accountability, and the emergence of communitarianist thought in the political agenda. The concept of the transformation of value as the characteristic process of opera is introduced. It is also shown that artistic value is the outcome of transactions between buyers and sellers; that it is irrevocably a market concept. In the context of a democratic market economy there is need, therefore, to widen participation in the artistic value agenda by incorporating the general public within an inclusive artistic value franchise. The history and theory of value is examined with reference to current aesthetic thought (Adorno's version of commodity fetishism, and postmodernism), the economic writings of Marx and Smith, and current explicit and implicit models of value (including the Baumol and Bowen productivity lag model, the Keynesian powerhouse model, public service provision, and the merit good theory). A methodology to gather consistent and reliable data from the mandatory annual financial reports of individual opera companies was developed. The difficulties associated with construction of the resultant data set revealed a lack of accountability within the sector. A long-run parametric study of the UK subsidized opera sector (1976-95) was then conducted. Results reveal an inexorable rise in the real cost of opera, and demonstrate, for the first time, the poor long-run performance of the UK subsidized opera sector. Results also confirm the existence of inequities (distributive injustices) in current subsidy policy, the presence of a controlling partial interest within the artistic value franchise (an artocracy), and treatment of artistic value as an exogenous given. It is concluded that these results are an inevitable outcome of the current opera infrastructure, and that there has been inadequate examination and consideration of alternative operational and infrastructural models, some of which are discussed here. Overall, it is concluded that the current, static, opera infrastructure precludes substantive artistic innovation, and that the museum element in the artform resides not in its repertoire, but in its infrastructure.

Hong Kong school music education has a very short history of about 50 years, beginning in 1945 immediately after the Second World War. It gradually evolved from practically no provision of music lessons to a well-structured system under the British administration until 1997 when sovereignty over Hong Kong was returned to China. This historical research aims to study and evaluate the development of the music education system, from which the music curriculum was organised and implemented. The causes and effects of government education and arts policies relating to the development of music in primary and secondary schools have been studied and evaluated. They have indirectly affected the supply and quality of music teachers, as well as the design and implementation of the music curriculum. Issues related to Hong Kong's political, social, economic, and cultural aspects have been identified and anlaysed so as to formulate a background for an understanding of how the enterprise of school music education in Hong Kong has developed. The research has gone through two phases. In the first phase, it aimed to find out any direct influence of British Government education policies upon school music education in Hong Kong. Literature such as British education acts, reports and colonial correspondence was analysed and interviews with key figures in the education field in Hong Kong were conducted. However, evidence from the two countries has shown no direct influence of the British administration on the development of school music education in Hong Kong. The research then, in its second phase, re-focused the approach by studying the local development of school music education. In this phase, apart from analysing reading material from government reports, reference books/journals on education and music education, music syllabuses as well as curriculum support material, three questionnaire surveys were conducted carried out to solicit views and opinions from frontline teachers, music inspectors and other professionals. In addition, interviews with government officials in Hong Kong and China have provided the researcher with a deeper insight into the development of school music education in Hong Kong. The research findings are that since the inclusion of Music as a subject in the school curriculum by British expatriates, the music education system and curriculum content in Hong Kong have been modelled on Western practice with no explicit education policies from the government. Furthermore, the inadequate allocation of human and financial resources for quality school music education has meant that school music education has developed under difficult circumstances. There has also been insufficient expertise in the education field to guide the design of the school music curriculum to meet local needs. As a result, a lot of out-dated curriculum content has been retained. Finally, as a result of a non-active attitude towards music in schools, parents and the community have provided inadequate fertilization for an artistic environment in which music learning might have flourished.

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