I start from the principle that composition is a historical lineage of techniques that have traditionally been applied to music but need not be. To illustrate this, I apply composition principles to the writing of this PhD thesis. In describing this process, I draw parallels between the music work I have composed during 2013-2017 and the process of thesis writing. Along the way, I show how quantization is not only central to my composition practice but fundamental to the act of composing; I rethink the basic epistemological principles of PhD research, using John Cage's ideology of chance and Arthur Koestler's idea of bisociation; I develop a new set of categories for classifying artworks that use combinatorics, under the umbrella neologism 'completism'; expand upon James Tenney's ideas to create a new typology of musical form based on completist principles; and finish by composing the bibliography, font, page-layout, semantics, word choice, and syntax of the Conclusion of this thesis.

This study examines the philosophical question of how it is possible to appreciate music aesthetically as an expressive art form. First it examines a number of general theories that seek to make sense of expressiveness as a characteristic of music that can be considered relevant to our aesthetic appreciation of the latter. These include accounts that focus on resemblances between music and human behaviour or human feelings, on music's powers of emotional arousal, and on various ways in which music may be imaginatively construed by listeners. It argues that none of these are entirely satisfactory. Then it proposes an alternative account, focusing on what is involved when our appreciation of music as an expressive art is informed by our awareness of it as something that is expressively interpreted in performance. It is claimed that this offers the basis for a better understanding of at least some aspects of expressiveness in music and its relevance to aesthetic appreciation.

This text is a commentary on the nature of my principle artistic preoccupations over a period of research-creation spanning 2011 and 2013. The works discussed cover, each in their own way, various approaches to sound composition linked to physical objects. In effect, the object proves to be a fundamental element at the heart of discourse, which, though anchored in sound, is often multi-disciplinary. The object here is thus taken apart in its affective, conceptual, performative, visual, as well as sonic properties. The first part of this text illustrates the nature of the relationship between the physical object and the works submitted for this doctoral thesis. It focuses on the journey of the works: from their genesis in the artist’s collections of objects to their life on stage where the objects are used as visual elements in a performative context. The second part is dedicated to the conceptual and aesthetic content of the works, from which flow the principal elements of their discourse. Here, the relationships between the work, the concept and the sonic material are established, which together make up their aesthetic.