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Can the modern composer, rather than employing extensional compositional techniques that run the risk of moving counter-intuitively to musicality, instead develop an empathic awareness of internal generative musical processes with the goal of manifesting these processes into the external sonic world?

This thesis consists of a portfolio of nine compositions accompanied by a written commentary and (where possible) audio recordings of these pieces. The compositions span a variety of instrumentations from large orchestral works to solo and chamber works. In the accompanying commentary I discuss the technical foundations of my compositional language, examining selected aspects of my gestural, harmonic, and timbral language to shed light on my creative process. The development and prominence of each of these aspects is discussed, with particular emphasis on the evolution of my timbral language. I demonstrate how I use extra-musical stimuli to determine compositional parameters for various musical elements affecting large-scale structures, gestural, harmonic and timbral language and more broadly the aesthetic impulses of a piece. As part of this, I discuss the importance of a concept that feeds into a work’s title to help determine various structural elements. I also explain how the views and thoughts of composers such as Kaija Saariaho, Arlene Sierra, Thomas Adès and Dai Fujikura have helped shape my approach to extra-musical stimuli. Chapter One focuses on a number of aspects of my compositional language, including extra-musical stimuli, gesture, harmony and timbre and covers a discussion of Stormscape, Momentations, Night Airs, Shadows Create the Night and Nacreous Contours. It also considers historical precedents for the techniques that I used in my works, tracking something of a trajectory through these to my music. In Chapter Two I discuss my choral work Apparitions in more detail, exploring how textural elements help to define the structure and enhance word-painting. Chapter Three centres on a detailed discussion of how extra-musical stimulus has been mapped musically affecting parameters such as structure, gesture and harmony in Roil in Stillness: Ripples and Waves. In Chapter Four a detailed discussion of a personal creative process sheds analytical light on Rainbow Fires. Here a number of different aspects are discussed with a focus on extra-musical stimuli, gesture, harmony, timbre and the application of ‘information theory’.

The folio of musical works supported by this document, explores the relationship between text and music. Using a variety of textual sources, from a single line of text to an epic poem to political speeches, has produced six pieces in which the relationship of the text to the music is figured in different ways; these range from the literal setting of a text to music to the abstracting of a text into a musical piece. In each case the form of the original text has been an important factor in influencing the form of the musical works. Gender considerations impact on this folio in two ways: firstly, gender is a key issue in some of the texts used as inspiration for the pieces, particularly Guinevere (2007) and Hilary &Maggie (2009).' Secondly, the folio explores how the position as a female composer affects engagement with both music and text. Finally, the folio works are related to the importance of Italian nationality to the composer. This supporting contextual document sets out the framework within which the folio was composed. It draws out the three main research threads that are explored in the folio: music and text, gender, and the Italian cultural perspective. Each thread of research is discussed with some contextual information given first, followed by an analysis of how this category impacts on the folio works.

This is a commentary on seven pieces I have created to explore the idea of music as the social activity of performance – including the rituals around it – instead of as abstract works. The pieces explore the relationship between performers and audience and the effects performance space has on that relationship, by addressing the function of the fourth wall as part of musical performance. Focusing on the inherent theatricality of musical performance, the pieces were created by experimenting with the non-sonic constituents of performance – i.e. the space that hosts performance and the rules that govern it, the distance between performers and audience and their behaviour towards each other. In short, my intention was to challenge performance conventions found in the performing tradition of Classical music by composing new music with an emphasis on the non-sonic constituents of performance. The commentary investigates various concepts about musical performance, which provided the ideas behind the pieces in my portfolio. The portfolio of pieces includes video documentation, descriptions of the pieces, scores and programme notes on each of the pieces. The videos and programme notes can be found in the accompanying DVD and in the following website: http://artefactsofperformance.blogspot.co.uk.

This submission investigates computer-aided performances in which musicians receive auditory information via earphones. The interaction between audio-scores (musical material sent through earpieces to performers) and visual input (musical notation) changes the traditional relationship between composer, conductor, performer and listener. Audio-scores intend to complement and transform the printed score. They enhance the accuracy of execution of difficult rhythmic or pitch relationships, increase the specificity of instructions given to the performer (for example, in the domain of timbre), and may elicit original and spontaneous responses from the performer in real-time. The present research is inspired by, and positions itself within traditional European notational practices. Through a reflection on the nature and function of notation in a variety of repertoires, this study examines how my own compositional research – and its reliance on audio-scores— relates to and differs from the models considered. Following the realisation of pieces investigating complex rhythms and the use of recorded samples as borrowed/found material, results have proven to be highly effective with a group of vocalists, with works in which audio-scores facilitated the precise realisation of microtonal material. Audio-scores also proved particularly useful in sitespecific ‘immersive’ concerts/installations. In these settings, audio-scores mitigate challenges associated with placing musicians at an unusual distances from one another, e.g. around the audience. This submission constitutes an original contribution to knowledge in the field of computer-aided performance in that it demonstrates how musical notation and current ubiquitous audio technologies may be used in tandem in the conception and performance of new works. Recent findings include a Web application currently being developed at IRCAM. The application is based on a local server and allows the synchronous delivery of audio/screen-scores via the browser of the performers’ smartphones, tablets, or computers. Keywords: audio-score, click track, composition, computeraided performance, earpiece, microtonality, music, notation, performance, screen-score, server, voice.

During my Master’s degree I created a series of electronic collage compositions by superimposing pre-existing recordings of ‘found’ musical material. The aim of my PhD has been to expand upon this work by applying a modified version of the same electronic techniques to the composition of acoustic instrumental music, employing transcription as a means of converting audio recordings into MIDI information, which was edited using a computer sequencer to create new works. In Section One ‘PhD Background and Development’, I present a summary of the earlier work to illustrate the technical and conceptual concerns that were the point of departure for my thesis. An overview of the PhD work follows, focusing on central issues such as: the relationship between material, process and structure; definitions of musical information; the philosophical implications of using collage techniques, embodied in the phrase ‘the refusal of totality’; and the practicalities that result from working with notation and acoustic instruments as opposed to electronic media. In addition, I contextualise my work and practice in relation to those musicians who have directly affected my compositional aesthetic, thereby demonstrating how I have attempted to build upon pre-existing lines of development to create original music. In Section Two ‘Analysis’, I outline my compositional technique in greater detail, and provide individual analyses for each of the works in the portfolio.

The spiritual journey of many greatly influential figures throughout history has been subject to physical journeys. The enlightening visions and experiences that prophets, poets and thinkers have witnessed have given birth to new intellectual horizons that might not have been achieved, but for the challenges and adventures entwined with the nature of migration. The musical journey of my life, too, has been affected by the physical and spiritual journey I have made by leaving Iran. The nature of Persian music, also, takes one on a mystical journey of self--‐analysis and awareness. Inevitably, my music is the product of the culture I was raised in and the ones I have had the privilege of living in. My interpretation of these cultures, hermeneutics of humanities and understanding of music, is also strongly influenced by my personality and psychological characteristics. As a composer, I have always refrained from commenting on my own music. I find the experience somewhat challenging, yet amusing, non--‐musical, yet poetic and unnecessary, yet fruitful. In writing this commentary, I have re--‐visited some of the most intimate compositional experiences I have had and I am grateful for the depth of insight provided by this experience.

The portfolio of compositions (part one) offers a selection of the composer’s most significant contributions to the body of creative human knowledge during four years of PhD study. The accompanying commentary (part two) has two objectives: 1. Exposition of the principal technical apparatus and aesthetic interests of the portfolio. 2. Investigation into the nature of poietic Ideas, music’s capacity to exemplify or embody Ideas, the analogising tendency in aesthetic experience and the impact upon the Idea of factors both intrinsic (technical, organological) and extrinsic (social and interpersonal) to the work. The commentary addresses compositional problems relating to large- and small-scale organisation and the perceptibility and expressive import of such features of a work, the problem of relating present work to past cultural achievements in the contemporary capitalist and pluralist Western world, and the problem of the social and educational situations that lead to composers’ loss of status as cultural assets and the marginalisation of the Idea. The thesis of the commentary is largely ‘anti-abstractionist’. It proposes that, through the analogising experience, music can express Ideas, not merely ‘abstract’, temporal geometric relations, but experiential, social and linguistic Ideas. These Ideas can be generated within the material organisation of a work, through cultural resonances associated with musical borrowings, or through the focusing influence of text. Contingent circumstances can serve to limit an Idea or to render it more precise. The commentary also argues that certain vicious circles in music-making and music education serve to damage musical culture, and suggests some causes for these phenomena. A Philosophical Introduction surveys attitudes and theories towards the Idea and musical expression and meaning; Arnold Schoenberg, Ferruccio Busoni, Arthur Schopenhauer, the claims of the logical positivists and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Milton Babbitt and Benjamin Boretz, the expression theories of Nelson Goodman and Jerrold Levinson and the relationship between music and physical movement all feature. Chapter One discusses the main technical apparatus of the composer, and the importance of Janusian thinking, harmonic architecture, canon, microtonality and spectralism. Chapter Two discusses musical borrowings and the significance of the past for the creative artist. Chapter Three discusses text as a powerful ‘designator’ (Kramer) of metaphorical meaning in music and possible text-music isomorphisms. Chapter Four discusses factors influencing composerperformer- listener interaction. A Preface and Afterword offer an anecdotal conte by the languages of contemporary art music.xt to this body of research and adumbrate future pathways for the composer. Together, the portfolio and commentary offer a conceptual framework for understanding 1. The nature and communication of poetic Ideas through music, and 2. The difficulties of audience reception engendered.