This thesis supports and discusses a portfolio of original compositions. These works investigate compositional and aesthetic approaches that contribute to, and extend the understanding of, soundscape composition. The portfolio includes seven original compositions: En Route, Residual Sileiter, Coast, Balconry, Arcando, Cold Wood, and Amalgam_Mac. These works are presented in a variety of formats, including stereo and multi -channel fixed medium compositions, collaborative and interactive scenarios for instrument and live electronics, as well as laptop ensemble with network activity. The works of the portfolio are discussed in the context of theoretical issues that relate to soundscape composition. This thesis also highlights recording techniques and compositional approaches in individual pieces, as well as identifying common threads throughout the portfolio. Included are in depth discussions of each piece, as well as prominent issues that arose throughout the research, such as the use of the composer's presence as a musical and communicative device, as well as the extension of soundscape composition practice to incorporate instrumentation and other practices within collaborative contexts.

This thesis and portfolio of compositions are the result of four years of research conducted through compositional practice and theoretical reflection. This thesis examines in some depth, what the art and craft of composition could be in the context of information age paradigms of communication and interaction. It provides an investigation into compositional approaches fitting to contemporary means of music-making. The focus of this project is composition through real-time, interactive performance systems, this subject is examined within the wider context of network performance, musical interaction and design, live electronics, live scoring, spatial consideration in composition, and new notational practices. This thesis presents the notion of a performance ecosystem, a ground from which a work of art can emerge through the act of performance. The performance ecosystem is conceived of as a self-generating environment that engages a process of genetic replication to expand the system in scope and complexity. Within these performance ecosystems, actions and interactions are generative, and the work is negotiated in real-time between multiple, independent yet interdependent actors. The product of this activity is not only the ensuing sounds, movements, and images that are created, but also the system, with all of its infrastructure and possibilities, and the performance act, as a combination of negotiations and explorations, through which each performer and experiencer partakes in a literal journey through the work. I believe that the performance ecosystem presents a satisfying framework for artistic creation in the context of contemporary constructs of creativity, thought, relationship and being and the way they are represented, experienced and engendered.

The seven pieces in this portfolio explore different modes of ‘narrative' musical development and display an increasing preoccupation with finding ways of integrating quarter-tonal and equal tempered material. Over the course of my portfolio I have largely allowed the material itself to drive the overall shape of the music, which has led me away from notions of closed form and linear narrative to something closer to Adorno’s idea of musique informelle, whereby the material “constitute[s] itself in an objectively compelling way, in the musical substance itself and not in terms of external laws”. 'Like memory of music fled ...' (2009) alludes to a musical fragment from the Paean of Athenaios found at Delphi and makes use of modal writing. In this quintet foreground and background are constantly blurred. On parted lips (2010) treats the voice as an instrument and is an investigation into the changing nature of an individual’s role within an ensemble. The song cycle Seven songs (2011) is constructed from a seemingly disparate combination of repetition by diminution and un-pitched/percussive material alongside plainchant and imitative textures. The narrative is often mechanistic and relies on offbeat accents to propel the music forwards. In her little room (2011) – a foray into both the world of music theatre and electronics – sets out to incorporate quarter-tones alongside equal temperament material. Here an electronic programme is used both to stretch and magnify the acoustic possibilities of the violin in a dramatic setting. The string quartet Enveloped Time (2011) inhabits a rarefied world of harmonics, ‘air sound', and quarter-tonal harmony almost exclusively in the high treble and built around a nucleus of central chords, that are then rendered unstable through an incessant harmonic ‘splintering’ and blurring of pitch levels. Close in ethos to Musique informelle, my ensemble work Beata Luna (2011) is based upon two fragments of plainchant: Beatus Hugo Piscator Dei and Alleluia Christus Resurgens. The harmonic language arose as an attempt to achieve a stable synthesis between quarter-tonal and equal- tempered material whilst the development of the musical narrative is sought by predominantly vertical means. My explorations into canonic form and the music of Aldo Clementi led me to compose In memoriam Aldo Clementi (2012) for 21 players. In essence a summation of my previous compositional pursuits, this piece also delves into the constructive potential of canon.

During this doctoral project, I sought to find within intellectually appealing works the techniques that would enable me to write music that I personally found intuitively engaging, physically exciting, and that would reconcile the different aesthetic tendencies and influences in my music which attempts to inhabit the borders of the vibrant Brazilian popular musics, jazz and European twentieth-century art music. The six compositions in this portfolio are the result of this research project which can be separated into two phases. In the first phase prevailed the study and appropriation of specific techniques identified in works by well established composers, namely Carter’s use of hexachords, Birtwistle’s layerings and Ligeti’s ‘consonant atonality’. These techniques were explored intuitively, reinterpreted and juxtaposed in different sections of the first three compositions present in the portfolio which are: Um Pequeno Ensaio (for piano, clarinet in Bb, violin and cello), Digressões (for clarinet in Bb, violin, cello, double bass and piano) and Resolute (for string quartet and guitar). In the second phase, these techniques were completely reconsidered and virtually abandoned in favour of a more unified and personal approach to harmony and composition through the use of ‘static harmonisation’, ‘static counterpoint’ and ‘compositional feedback loops’, culminating in the final three pieces of the portfolio: Shades (for an ensemble of eleven players), Of Instance and Memory ( for an ensemble of ten players) and Different Sevens (for orchestra). During this research for appropriate harmonic techniques, I also explored the appropriation and reinterpretation of a number of textures and rhythms derived form jazz and Brazilian popular music albeit in different musical contexts. These textures all have as central thematic the pianist’s role as accompanist within these popular musics, an aspect which is indebted to the fact that the piano is my constant source of compositional ideas and experimentation through improvisation and performance.

In setting out the following commentaries, I have tried to focus on the details in each composition which I feel illustrate most clearly my approach to compositional technique. I have also tried to indicate how I perceive the development of that technique from work to work. In terms of general technique, one of my main concerns is to communicate as simply and clearly as possible - though admittedly, sometimes even the simplest reduction of an idea still remains fairly complex in terms of notation. ( I shall say more about notation in the pieces later, in a general conclusion.)

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One of the most important factors in composing n piece of music is the balance between the use of intellect and the use of intuition. If the composer is over-conscious of what be is doing or constructs too much from theoretical principles, relying on an abstract justification rather than his ear, the music becomes stiff, awkward and finally proportionless. The intuition, on the other hand, needs support, a framework against which to project new material, if it is not to lose direction and purpose as it becomes incapable of controlling all the variables at once. Intellect and intuition continually interact. On the one hand the intuition throws up ideas that are formalised by the intellect (to be quickly forgotten after use or kept as a permanent technical principle) and on the other the intellect continually challenges the intuition with frames, goals and rules. These may eventually be broken or twisted as the intuition senses a. deeper logic (indeed the idea of intuition as a perceiver of deeper-logic is an attractive one) but this perception could not be made without the focusing of a framework. The relationship is complex. One can intuitively perceive a framework as one can intellectually construct any moment to moment sequence. T~ere is a continuum between the two; they are inseparable and constantly overlapping. Things might become half-conscious - to sink again, or after several similar events, emerge as a principle.