This portfolio contains seven works for a variety of ensembles and explores a number of distinct approaches of mapping textile patterns into musical parameters, incorporating various compositional techniques, such as microtonality, minimalism, serialism, and stochastic composition. The commentary examines the aesthetic links between the compositions through the exploration of the interaction of visuals and sonic art, analysing in detail the analogous features between them. It is not the intention of this commentary to inform the reader how to compose music that is derived from textile patterns. Instead, this commentary is to be viewed as a personal creative method, describing the concepts and techniques employed in the music. The commentary is divided into two parts. The first part aims to outline the general methods involved in the construction of textile patterns, focusing on possible relations with various musical parameters. The second part presents these ideas as realised in the practical setting of my compositional work, drawing on the diverse strands of my artistic practice.

This thesis is given in the form of an exploratory commentary centred on my readings of theories of emotion in music which have directly informed compositional procedures. Rather than presenting a set of compositional techniques as supposed embodiments of certain theories of emotion in a compositional setting, this commentary charts developments in my own compositional thinking and practice which have arisen as a result of a personal engagement with these theories. My role as a musical listener is a key factor in this engagement: it allows me to provide evidence which may validate the theories as viable compositional informants and also allows me to reflect on the musical products of my engagements with the theories to inform further compositional action. The thesis begins by exploring my compositional motivations for, and usage of, linear processes in Chapter 2, before an exposition of a compositional scenario where these processes are nested to allow them to shape different structural levels in Chapter 3. The fourth chapter is concerned with a compositional application of Leonard Meyer’s work on emotion in music which is centred on the concept of a musical expectation, before Chapter 5 explores alternatives to this model. Chapter 6 then considers my work composed in the wake of these theoretical engagements, and viewed in relation to them.

This thesis presents results from an ethnographic interview-based study of the practices and processes of composers who create graphic notation for network performance.

This research is an inquiry into how architecture can inform the practice of composition. As an architect and composer, I try to find strategies for musical composition In architectural practice and thought, by reframing and confronting concepts from both disciplines. My research aims at an expanded practice (and analysis) of musical creation that transverses different conceptions of space-from the score based pitch space to the social and political spaces of music's production, performance and reception. This practice based PhD research consists of a portfolio of nine works that were developed in a dialectical relation to these ideas. The works are presented in a framework composed of five conceptual tools used to articulate music and architecture. These are; Material, Site. Drawing, Programme and Use. With the notion of Material. I explore how the acoustic behaviour of a performance space, or of a performatlve device' affects the musical work. Architectural materials become musical ones as they are implicated in the listening experience. The discussion about Site brings to music the notions of place. the local, and everyday life, embracing soundscapes so many times excluded from musical discourse. Musical sites are also architectural sites, always related to their present environment, and their everyday contlngenclt;ls. Drawing Is a tool for developing ideas, but also the main mediator between architect and builder. or composer and performer. Programme exposes the constraints and conditions of the creation process, while also revealing the sociopolitical relations between musicians and audiences, institutions and composers, composers and performers. Programming as framing can be a platform to expand what the work concerns. Through a consideration of Use, the work becomes dispersed in a pJurality of agents that converge in a useful event. Thus composition. as architecture, moves from being about conditioning design to designing conditions where musical events may happen.

One presentation box containing seven individually-bound original compositions, a single-bound accompanying text with introduction, commentary and reflection on the works, and one compact disc containing five recordings from particular works, as listed.

A portfolio of original compositions with an accompanying commentary The compositions are: ‘Pomes Penyeach’ with texts by James Joyce for soprano, harp and string quartet; ‘Orb of Earth to Arch of Sky’ for mixed choir; ‘Spire’ for orchestra; ‘Ampletude’ for pedal harp; ‘Chromatetude’ for lever harp; ‘A Score and Thirteen’ for B flat clarinet and piano; and ‘In Mary’s Eye’ for solo cello. The works address a number of compositional focal points: to bring together diverse strands of musical influence into sustained musical argument across various large-scale media; to enlarge and explore the musical language of the harp, including the lever harp; and to integrate received materials into new music so as to create a different context while acknowledging musical inheritance. These combine with the exploration of inherent instrumental colour within my approaches to rhythm, harmony, melodic transformation, structure, and the use of text to demonstrate the development of my compositional style in recent years. The commentary opens with three contextual chapters which outline my compositional approach and which discuss prominent aspects common to the attached works. These chapters are ‘My Main Compositional Concerns’, ‘Use of Received Materials’ and ‘Writing for Voice’. Commentaries on individual works follow, providing discussion of dimensions of the pieces which are not addressed in the opening chapters.

The second half of the seventeenth century was a period of considerable upheaval in English music, not only because the political instability of the time altered the way musicians were employed, but also because the era saw fundamental changes in the construction and perception of music. The most important of these was a transition between music conceived primarily according to horizontal (imitative) principles and that founded on vertical (tonal) principles, which in turn allowed for vastly expanded formal dimensions. The seventeenth century also witnessed the gradual replacement of the remaining elements of mensural notation and proportional metrical relationships in favour of free tempo with contrasts between duple and triple units, again influencing the way in which works were structured. These elements are examined from the viewpoint of the music theorist, by analysing the thirty-seven treatises which were in circulation in manuscript or printed form during the century. However, the greater part of the dissertation seeks to assess the impact of such profound alterations on the composer himself, through detailed analysis of the music's notation and its development- --in response to the changing styles and techniques; in order to be as certain as possible that such developments were genuine attempts to communicate new attitudes to music and its construction rather than simply the results of mistakes or misunderstandings by copyists, the analysis is restricted to the ninety-four extant autograph manuscripts of composers' own music copied during the period. These primary sources include several previously unidentified sketches and working drafts of pieces which reveal elements of the processes used by composers in the conception of new pieces, as well as finished copies from which has been drawn information on the status of metre, tonality and structure during the period.

This portfolio of compositions contains ten pieces, composed between 2012 and 2016. It is a mixed portfolio, representative of a broad range of my musical interests rather than one which specialises exclusively on a single facet of my output. There are several strands of thought which emerge from this portfolio; I regard them as inter-connected and braided together throughout my work. They are fundamental to my composing and are central to the development of my personal musical language. For the sake of concision and cohesion I have grouped them into three sections: 1) the search for clarity, at all levels but particularly that of form and design, 2) exploring aspects of repetition within these pieces, and 3) the influence of cinematic practice upon the compositional process, specifically the impact of visual techniques (such as film editing) on the assembly of musical structures. That discussion is followed by commentaries on the individual pieces included in this portfolio.

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