Musica Speculativa is a final project in two parts in which I explore, through both theory and practice, the role of metaphors in our understanding of reality with special attention given to the use of visual representation in multimedia concert works that employ electroacoustics. Part I, entitled, "Imaginary Cognition: Interpreting the Topoi of Intermedia Electroacoustic Concert Works," explores how metaphors play a core role in our musical experience and how aural metaphors can be enhanced by and ultimately interact with visual metaphors to create a contrapuntal intermedia experience. Part II, "Musica Speculativa: A Multimedia Concert in Five Movements and Three Intermezzi," for mezzo-soprano, flute, B-flat bass clarinet, violin, cello, piano, a percussionist performing an array of lightning bottles, a dancer with a gesture-sensing wand, and a technologist operating interactive audio and video processing, focuses on the medieval philosophy of Musica Speculativa and how it relates to our current understanding of the world. In part I explore the heightened experience of metaphorical exchange through the utilization of multimedia. The starting point is the expansion of visual enhancement in electroacoustic compositions due to the widespread availability of projection in concert halls and the multimedia expectations created through 21st-century Western culture. With the use of visual representation comes the potential to map musical ideas onto visual signs, creating another level of cognition. The subsequent unfolding of visual signifiers offers a direct visual complement and subsequent interaction to the unfolding of aural themes in electroacoustic compositions. The paper surveys the current research surrounding metaphorical thematic recognition in electroacoustic works whose transformational processes might be unfamiliar, and which in turn create fertile ground for the negotiation of meaning. The interaction of media and the differences created among the various signs within the music and the visual art create a heightened concert experience that is familiar to and in many ways expected by contemporary listeners. Composers such as Jaroslaw Kapuscinski have sought to use multimedia as a means to enhance the concert experience, giving movement to the acousmatic presence in their electroacoustic works. In turn, these works create a concert experience that is more familiar to the 21st-century audience. Through examining Kapuscinski's recent work, Oli's Dream, in light of cognitive research by Zbikowski (1998 & 2002), topic theory by Agawu (1991 & 2009), and multimedia research by Cook (1998), I propose a theory for analyzing contrapuntal meaning in multimedia concert works. The themes explored in Part I, regarding the use of metaphor to interpret both visual and aural stimuli, ultimately creating a metaphor for a reality never fully grasped due to the limits of human understanding, are further explored artistically in the multimedia concert work, Musica Speculativa. The medieval philosophy of Musica Speculativa suggests that music as it is understood today (musica instrumentalis) is the only tangible form of the metaphysical music ruling human interactions (musica humana) and ordering the cosmos (musica mundana). I found the concept of Musica Speculativa to be a fitting metaphor for how music and art allude to our own perception of reality and our place within that world. The project as a whole re-examines the concept of Musica Speculativa in light of our current technological landscape to gain a deeper understanding of how we interact with the world around us. / Music Composition / Accompanied by one .pdf score: Musica Speculativa.

This thesis explores the relationships that exist between reification, the conceptualisation of music, and the composition of new concert music. In general terms, reification can be described as the mental process of conceiving abstract concepts as tangible and concrete things. The problem of reification in the conceptualisation of musical works is one that exists between a rock and a hard place: we rely on something like reification in order to gain any sense of meaning from our experiences of the abstract aspects of musical works, but treating the reified understanding of these aspects as if they are what makes musical works meaningful ignores the emergent and transitory aspects of our interactions with musical works as being inherently meaningful in and of themselves. Through a variety of ethnographic, phenomenological and narrative methods, this thesis aims to challenge the long-held notions of meaning construction within the field of analytical aesthetics. It also aims provide a conceptual framework with which composers can use to practically study, collect data and analyse the conceptualisation of meaning in their compositions, as well as apply this understanding to audiences’ conceptualisation of meaning in musical works. The results of this thesis project culminate in the creation and presentation of three artistic outcomes: a new and original work for chamber ensemble, and two audio papers that explore the synthesis of interview responses and recordings of musical works within the framework of an audio-based discourse. Semi-structured interviews in the form of stimulated recall sessions were conducted as a means of obtaining data from participants about their interpretation of meaning in musical works. The use of metaphors as a conceptual framework with which to code and analyse data collected from these sessions allowed for the linguistic conceptualisation of musical meaning that avoided the theory construction and analytical aesthetic tendencies of modern music philosophy. This conceptual framework was also applied in the coding and analysis of a compositional perspective of the new work in order to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between composers and audiences in their interpretations of musical meaning. While this thesis does not purport to offer a “theory” for the conceptualisation of meaning in musical works (such an exercise is both impossible and pointless), the findings presented in the analysis of the new composition and audio papers allows for a conceptual framework that takes into account the everyday use of language in communicating the experiences of composers and audience members in their conceptualisation of meaning in musical works.