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The aim of my research is to develop a compositional style of orchestral writing that is rich in polarities. This will be achieved through practice-based research using a range of compositional techniques as springboards to create a highly-charged symphonic language, contextualised by a discussion of the influence of stimuli on the compositional process. This thesis comprises a portfolio of seven musical works with supporting commentary documenting the research process and providing contextual and analytical detail. Using a range of influences such as myth and nature as springboards, my research consists of the development of an individual compositional language in which texture plays an important part. Central to this approach is the role of dialogue between polarities such as rhythmical versus timeless, calm and ethereal versus agitated and aggressive, polyphonic density and textural mass versus clarity of line. The research culminates in a triptych of orchestral pieces collectively entitled Anubis (entitled ‘Anubis’, ‘Isis’ and ‘Ammit’ respectively). Each piece forms a movement of Anubis yet can be performed in a stand-alone form. Also included in the portfolio are a number of supporting works that serve as experiments in the use of texture, structure and narrative, as well as exploring how stimuli can be a powerful tool in the creation of striking sonic textures, which then function within complex compositional structures in the main work. The commentary documents the research journey, charting the evolution of my musical language from piece to piece whilst explaining the relationship between source stimuli and resulting compositional response. The completed work, Anubis, comprises three movements exploring a range of textural polarities within a cohesive and consistent sound-world.

The relationship between sound and the environment is complex. How we present musical or sound works has a profound effect on the way we perceive them, and the way we perceive the performance or installation environment. Composers and sound artists can exploit and explore this fundamental relationship between sound and environment through creative works. From utilising a place's acoustic properties to exploring its cultural significance, the artist has access to a palette of resources to transform the audience's conceptualisation of sound and environment. When creating a work that explores a sound-environment relationship, it is important that we then ask how the work can engage with its performance or installation environment, how it can be adapted to different environments, and how it can transform a space into place. A range of approaches exploring and integrating sound-environment relationships into musical and sound works are investigated in this thesis. A practice-based methodology has been adopted, where I have iteratively contextualised and critically reflected upon my own creative practice. This has produced a portfolio of creative works, software and a written commentary. Emerging from the portfolio and works examined throughout this research, a typology of sound-environment relationships is proposed. In conclusion, an assessment is given of how the typology and portfolio each address the research questions. General conclusions are then presented, further discussing how to approach works with sound-environment relationships and suggestions for their possible applications. Finally, potential research beyond this thesis is also discussed.

The topic of this PhD thesis is dramatic vocal composition combining lyric singing with extended vocal techniques. The aim of the research is to compose a music theatre piece or chamber opera for voice and chamber ensemble that exploits both the lyrical singing voice and extended vocal techniques, in ways that are practical and appealing to the lyric singer. The main submission is Every Inch Of Many Effigies: Six Courthouse Songs (2012/13), a music theatre piece for baritone and chamber ensemble. The composition, twenty-five minutes in duration, is a political satire piece set to a combination of original text by Alan McKendrick and found texts. The work was premiered by Leigh Melrose and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted by Oliver Knussen in March 2013. This commentary examines Every Inch Of Many Effigies and its level of success in achieving the above aim. It charts the exploration of the topic and the progression to the final piece through the composition of supporting works. A key area of research is the discovery and exploration of extended vocal techniques: the considerations and effectiveness of their application with regard to the response of singers, notation and balance. Alongside this, considering the singer in terms of the role of extended vocal techniques in theatrical works and how this can justify their use, the pursuit and integration of lyrical singing and the musical difficulties of contemporary music. This commentary will discuss the application and success of this research by considering the compositions on paper and practically through their performances.

The compositions presented in this portfolio are unified by a common underlying theme: the idea of silence in music. The works were written between October 2012 and August 2015 during the course of my research. They were conceived as part of my exploration of three silence-related areas: the uses of silence in music; the ways of effecting a perception of silence musically; and an indeterminate approach to placing silence in a musical work. Some pieces seek to explore one major idea while the purposes of others may be manifold. But in all these compositions, silence emerges as an integral part of the overall musical structure.

The seven pieces in this portfolio are an exploration about how to incorporate diverse ethnic elements - such as Chinese Peking Opera, folk culture, and ancient instrumental music - into conventional Western ensemble forms, in conjunction with certain compositional methods of contemporary music. Over the course of this portfolio I have largely allowed the material itself to drive the overall shape of the music, like most Chinese composers, I have never relinquished melody as a driving force in my music. In Haiku (2012) the electronic tape links the two acoustic instruments causing the listener to experience a dialogue between the flute and cello as if they were watching two different scenes simultaneously as via the split-screen cinematic technique. The piano suite Beijing (2013) is characterized by distinctive elements from traditional Peking Opera, ancient Chinese folk melodies, and extensive use of pentatonic melodies. Tension is achieved through contrast of both dynamics and tempi, dissonance created through pitch oppositions inherent within a particular harmonic field, as well as through the use of freely atonal elements and the accumulation of varying and often disparate musical materials. I approached the scoring for the sextet Pilgrims from the snow-covered plateau (2013) by way of combining the instruments that I felt would offer me the most interesting and vivid combined timbre with which to effectively evoke Tibetan temple horns. Double Riddles (2013) extensively draws on a large number of Chinese musical sources, extrapolating their materials (mostly pitch-related) and working this into my own compositions. These pieces were inspired the folk music and culture of Yunnan. The westerly wind said… (2014) relies on several simple approaches to reflect an 'antique' style: layered yet coherent details at once juxtaposed and integrated to create a general mood redolent of the past, but which never resorts to pastiche. Nuó (2015) attests to what I have found to be both an amazingly fruitful and challenging process of compositional research into the possibility for the integration of traditional aspects of Chinese music and culture with Western classical forms and modes of expression: combining Chinese musical materials alongside aspects of free atonality and pentatonicism. A Plum Tree Blossomed Fully in Front of Bi Fang Pavilion (2015) for symphony orchestra relies heavily on complex sound patterns based on gradations of colour derived from different techniques of orchestration.

I use a range of techniques to put together my musical ideas, techniques that are rooted in the incidental and intentional listening that identifies who I am, as a person as well as a composer. Reflecting on the intentional is relatively easy. Reflecting on the incidental requires objective analysis of one's own music. Inevitably, such analysis identifies preoccupations and preferences, as well as technical weaknesses and obsessions, all of which may or may not be unhealthy. Like many composers, I develop various systems to help me generate the sketch material which eventually becomes the completed piece. These are important to me and can occupy the mind long after the job of selecting – and therefore discarding – and organising has been started. This is the work that in essence produces the version of the music to be heard – the only version that matters. While others may be interested, even intrigued, by the process of composing, it is difficult to accept the importance of the process to the listener. Once systems have served their purpose, they hold little relevance for me; they may be compromised, altered, even ignored to serve the needs of the music as it develops in its own right. The preoccupations that occupy me presently are: omophonic heterophon Non octave-repeating modes and derivative chord group Rhythmic devices in melodic constructio Temporal ambiguit The application of sets of rules or systems This commentary describes my methods and some of the intentional and incidental influences on my music, and reflects on my thoughts about how my music might be perceived by others. It also reflects on others' and my thoughts on the relationship between composer and listener. This is something I have come to appreciate the greater significance of during the post-compositional analytical process – my starting point for the commentary – and something which seems increasingly more complex than I had once imagined.

This research project extends my creative work and unpacks my interest in the use of sonification and mapping as compositional strategies, both in my own practice and more broadly. The thesis reflects on the installed composition, 'Building Materials', synthesising a methodology for the creation of similar works by exploring research problems arising from its creation. The thesis considers the tension between the apparently objective process of mapping and the personal, intuitive, nature of creative practice. This tension establishes a space of uncertainty into which viewers can respond imaginatively to a work built on unseen mappings, granting an audience a sense of the sonified phenomenon. These themes are discussed, and two discrete terms are arrive at: 'installed composition' and 'reverse mapping'. The first contextualises my practice with a descriptor that can help an audience usefullly situate the work and by extension others similar, while the second proposes a model for reading work made using these processes that centres on the relationship between the actual mapped phenomenon and a speculative version in an audience's mind.

The six pieces in this portfolio explore contemporary musical narratives as if approached from a traditional outlook. In these pieces many harmonic and rhythmic processes (modal, serial,‘post-serial’ and minimalist) that emerged in Post-War music, as well as their resulting forms or modes of continuity interact with a traditionally grounded, intuitive approach to 'thematicism'. Another important topic in this music is an engagement with certain formal elements and mannerisms of contemporary popular, rock and dance music, and the ethnic musical traditions of my cultural heritage. Writing for string instruments informed by the composer’s personal experience as a double bass performer is a central concern of the thesis. Knife in the Water (for violin and cello) explores elements of heavy metal rhythms, Middle Eastern incantations, and free and strict meter. Bonaparte Born to Party (for mixed quintet) builds on the jagged heavy metal and dance elements found in Knife in the Water, subjecting some of the harmonic structures of the latter to a fairly strict process of transformation while relying to a much greater extent!on repetition. A Poem is a Burning City (for ten players) explores the possibility of creating a sort of'modality' by means of timbre as well as the 'transformation of sonority' itself as a means for delineating a binary form. While its harmonic language shares many aspects with the earlier pieces, here they are no longer the main concern of the music, which relies primarily on ‘colour', 'sonority' and extensive 'repetition' for the unfolding of a slowly evolving texture. In the string quintet Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy, the Suite for solo violin and the Lullaby for double bass and orchestra, the type of explorations of colour and! sonority incipient in A Poem is a Burning City are extended and combined with the developmental processes and clear thematic and! melodic/harmonic!materials that characterise the earlier pieces.

Finding a balance between intellectual tools and a spontaneous development of ideas is one of the most challenging aspects of composition. With the common ground of a preference for rich and varied musical grammars, this thesis looks at three different strategies to organize materials and structures, and explores the individuality and variety that emerges from an improvisatory approach to writing music. The research that is described in this commentary has resulted in the development of a rational system that, using mathematical constants, modifies pitch, durations and dynamics in a continuous and predetermined way. The relevance of this method lies on its potential to unfold directional material and create subtle deviations from an original sound or group of sounds. A second strategy explores music in which motivic connections relate analogously to poetic structures. This approach reveals the potential of literary forms to construct meaningful musical nanatives; phonetic resemblances are translated into motifs in order to experiment with the proportions and rhythms of poetry. Finally, free compositional strategies (variant types of improvisation) have been used to create a comprehensive musical language. Making use of textures and techniques that derive from the previous two strategies, this approach draws upon atonality and elements borrowed from functional tonality to outline heterogeneous narratives. In relation to form, the contrast between complex textures and simple settings, and the coexistence of diverse materials, contribute to yield dynamism and directionality. Richness is an essential part of this language as musical objects are frequently presented in a wide variety of forms.