The Real Deal is a term often used by musicians to describe people they perceive to be more authentic than them. Over the past seven or eight years, I have performed music from Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Turkey and beyond under the umbrella of World Music in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world: London. As I negotiated my way onto this scene and played with some of the finest musicians, I became increasingly aware of those I felt to be the Real Deal. I also began to feel that, in certain circumstances, I may also have appeared to be the Real Deal to others. Many of the musicians on this scene had begun their foray into these diverse styles with klezmer and it is this style that I explore most with relation to the Real Deal. As klezmer is a Jewish music style not played, or even enjoyed, by all Jews, this makes notions of the Real Deal much more ambiguous. This thesis examines the movable perception that is the Real Deal and the complex interplay that results between musicians. Through discussions with twenty musicians with whom I have played regularly, I discussed the Real Deal and how it affects the way we work. Although half of the musicians self-identified as being Jewish and the other half did not, this became only one factor in the complex negotiations involved in professional music making. The often amusing anecdotes of mistaken identity that we shared raised fundamental questions about our stage performances. I examine the complex issues surrounding klezmer as a style of music and the unique scene that has developed from the American revival in London. I consider the role of the Jewish Music Institute and how it serves the Jewish community and professional musicians in London and beyond. Finally, I assess how my discussions with musicians and the Jewish Music Institute have not only changed and shaped this evolving scene, but forced me to question my own attitudes and practice.

This investigation provides an answer to the following ontological question: what is an acousmatic musical performance? Chapter 1 discusses acousmatic sound – a fundamental constituent of the acousmatic musical performance – and considers ways in which acousmatic sounds are determined in advance of, and during, a performance. Chapter 2 presents the acousmatic performance as an agent-centred, skilful enterprise that serves both composers and listeners through intentional communicative acts. Chapter 3 examines the nature of, and relations that hold between, acousmatic performances and acousmatic works. Chapter 4 considers interpretations of works and highlights some of the various ways in which interpretations are formulated, regulated and executed. Chapter 5 focuses upon the notion of performance authenticity and questions whether it is possible for an acousmatic performance to be considered inauthentic. Taken as a whole, these five chapters highlight the central constituents of the acousmatic musical performance, unravel the collective input of composers, performers, listeners and technologies, and explicate the complex network of relations that coalesce within the performance environment. The methods employed within this thesis relate to the practice of musical ontology, and have been significantly influenced by Richard Wollheim’s realist account of type and tokens (Wollheim 1980) and Stephen Davies’ notion of thick and thin musical works (Davies 2004). These ontological theories provided a method for identifying and discussing the relations that hold between acousmatic performances and acousmatic works, and were ultimately fundamental to the formulation of a bespoke type-theory that serves music of the acousmatic tradition. Accordingly, the research serves two distinct communities. On the one hand, it serves the ontological community; acousmatic music has received very little ontological attention and, as a result, this research broadens the investigative scope of the discipline whilst considering how existing theories may be applied to music of the acousmatic tradition. On the other hand, it serves the acousmatic community; by abstracting and explaining the central constituents of the acousmatic musical performance, this investigation clarifies the roles of composers, performers and listeners, and demonstrates how understanding of these roles may inform creative practice. A portfolio consisting of six original acousmatic compositions has been produced. This compositional research allowed theoretical ideas to be tested, and works in the portfolio are cited to contextualise key points.

In live electronic musical research there is a need to confront the interrelationships between the social and the technological in order to understand our music as practice. These interrelationships form a complex and dynamic ecosystem that not only forms the context to, but is constitutive of practice. I interrogate from a variety of perspectives the musical practice that has formed over the course of this research in order to reveal the dispositions towards technology, the social situatedness and the musical approach that underlies my work. By taking a disposition towards musical practice-led research that is non-hierarchical, performative, ecological, phenomenological and pragmatic, I place into wider context compositional and technological decisions, in terms of their relationships to improvising, skill, design, performance and research. This work contributes both new theories of live electronic musical practice and new suggestions for practice-led methods aimed at investigating the interplay of social and material factors in musicking, and at interrogating the disciplinary status of our field vis-a-vis musical and technical disciplines.

The music of Veljo Tormis (b. 1930) became well-established in Estonia during the 1960s yet remained little known in the West during the Communist period. By incorporating traditional song, regilaul,into his works, Tormis’s name became closely associated for Estonians with upholding a sense of national identity against the Soviet regime. It is his vast output of some 500 choral songs for which he is most immediately recognised; indeed, once regilaul had come to dominate the ‘Tormis style’, he dedicated himself almost exclusively to choral composition. This study, building on the work of Mimi Daitz and Urve Lippus, examines and contextualises Tormis’s life and music, and considers the domination of regilaul on Tormis’s vision. A postscript to the dissertation examines two of my own works for choir, The Singing will never be done (2006) and The Ruin (2012). It also explores the ways in which the second of these was influenced by Tormis’s choral music in general, and by his landmark piece Raua Needmine [Curse upon Iron] (1972) in particular.

This thesis examines Schoenberg’s use of tonal elements in various works written after 1909. The meanings of the terms, tonal and atonal, are first explored; subsequently, tonal aspects and their connection to a work’s structure are investigated in several of Schoenberg’s atonal and serial pieces. Schoenberg’s serial technique in his later works such as the Piano Concerto was less rigid than in works such as the Suite für Klavier; these later pieces also contain many retrospective, tonal, elements. A number of analyses of the Concerto, including those by Brian Alegant, Walter Bailey, Alfred Brendel, Kenneth Hicken, Martha Hyde, Guerino Mazzola and Benedikt Stegemann, Dika Newlin, and Rudolph Stephan, have attempted to take into consideration these elements. An overview of these analyses is presented here, followed by the author’s own assessment of the Concerto. This, it is proposed, offers an enlightened approach to the performance of Schoenberg’s piano music.

This doctoral research concerns recurrent phenomena in acousmatic works, investigating aspects of correspondence among the constituent sound materials, illuminating the temporal relationships existing among them, and providing concepts to help rationalise compositional structuring processes. While the main focus is on acousmatic music, many of the ideas developed in the research have broader scope and are relevant to other areas of music composition. The concept of recurrence is initially defined and considered, followed by the investigation of different aspects of sound identity. Significant factors that contribute to sound identities are proposed, and existing analytical approaches to identity classification are surveyed. A taxonomy of recurrent phenomena is then elaborated, presenting various aspects of sound identity correspondence and temporal relationships, illustrated with examples from acousmatic repertoire. Concepts described in the taxonomy are practically verified and explored in the accompanying portfolio of five acousmatic compositions, and the integration of the theory within practice is documented in the commentaries. The study identifies principles of recurrence that are unique to acousmatic music, providing concepts for creative exploration within and beyond this area of composition, but which are equally pertinent to analytical endeavours. This research is useful to both analysts and composers because it encourages a sensitivity to specific aspects of sound organisation, whilst providing terminology to describe the different relationships at play.

This thesis takes a qualitative approach to interrogating a selection of PJHarvey's music video performances via the textual analysis of seven videos from 1993 – 2004. Its theoretical position is broadly feminist. This is because it follows debates emerging from feminist popular music studies that are concerned with the ways in which women within the popular music industry might be said to challenge or 'disrupt' certain expected codes and conventions (Whiteley, 1997, 2000; Burns and Lafrance, 2002). It takes these debates across to Harvey‟s music video performances and starts to address how this move requires a rethinking of the ways in which such challenges have been formulated. The theoretical underpinnings for this thesis sit at the intersections of feminist popular music theory, music video theory and diva theory. The literature review situates this work within a context of previous work in these fields and here gaps are identified that are developed more fully in the analyses chapters. The first claim is that most, if not all of the critical approaches under review have produced work that has mapped out the 'disruptive' feminine by drawing on the psychoanalytical work of the mid to late twentieth century of Rivière ([1929]1986), Irigaray (1977,1985) and Butler (1990,1993). Perhaps inevitably, theorists in popular music and music video theory have engaged with the resulting debate that is couched within the binary of resistance verses recuperation that this thesis argues is unhelpful to a reading of Harvey's performance of the masquerade (Walser,1993). Whilst its methodological thrust is propelled by existing routes of enquiry from within music video studies, it also asks for a reconsideration of the nature of the 'text' in relation to music video, reviewing the security of a 'textual account' to consider how reframing music video as a moving archive impacts on methods and access. This organic reaction to a rapidly developing media environment within which the videos have been accessed has seen the analyses chapters reflect and reframe concepts related to challenge that articulate both dissatisfaction with those debates in relation to Harvey's videos and a fresh way of approaching music video performance. First it argues that because Harvey's performances of the masquerade are invested in the past, she is an archivist. It therefore puts forward the concept of the 'memory-ade' which is a rethinking of the masquerade that allies it cultural memory (Van Dijck, 2007; Grainge, 2002; Pentzold, 2009). This takes into account the weight of the masquerade and the investment that Harvey has in it. Continuing on with the concern that a binary model of resistance and recuperation does not allow for a flexible reading of Harvey's video work, it then argues that her video performances are ambiguous. They foreground a mimetic and wicked sense of humour that allows her to subvert and challenge dominant tropes of femininity, by 'miming and displacing' them (Butler, 1992:3), whilst also continuing to hold such archetypes in affection. In relation to this sense of humour, it formulates the concept of 'serious camp' a development of the term (Robertson, 1996; Michasiw, 1997) that takes account of the independent rock genre within which Harvey operates. The third strand is concerned with Harvey's performances of the diva and how they offer something different to extant debates on this subject by positioning her as a 'deathly' diva, one whose performances foreground loss or death, specifically in relation to domesticity and desire (Leonard, 2007; Bradshaw 2007; O'Neill, 2007). These three ways of looking at Harvey's performances remain premised on the core contention that she is somehow causing 'trouble' (Butler, 1990; Doty, 2007). But it is just how this trouble can be theorised within the shifting contexts of music video and what it means for a development of the ways we might re-conceptualise "disruption" that lies at the heart of this thesis.

The aesthetics of composing electroacoustic music that includes both environmental and digitally processed sounds were studied. This was accomplished by practical means, resulting in a folio of creative work. Compositional methods and techniques relating to the interaction between environmental and processed sounds are detailed in this written dissertation. The dissertation also explores compositional applications for theories derived from the discipline of acoustic ecology. The context a sound might exist in, as well as the timbral characteristics of the sound itself, are shown to be vital in developing a coherent compositional approach for the integration of natural sounds into complex musical hierarchies. Simulated sonic environments are identified as being effective in this aim, as it is possible for the composer to exert considerable control over the development of their individual sounding elements. The characteristics that define simulation, and the interaction between sound sources and spaces were analysed. The notion of context bonding was introduced, which aims to link Smalley's concept of surrogacy' to a sound's extrinsic connotations. Discovery strategy is a practical methodology that was developed whilst composing the creative work that accompanies this dissertation. By using a set of structural devices called steering processes, it aims to assist first-time listeners in decoding the structural characteristics of a work. Steering processes couple simple and easily recognisable rhetorical codes of communication to a clear underlying sub-structure. Discovery strategy techniques do not attempt to simplify works for easy listening. Moreover, they allow the potential for more listeners to access the inner structural details of a piece. As the creative folio demonstrates, this can result in a musical surface that is highly distinctive and energetic.

Despite an abundance of research and literature on the Viennese piano in the Classical period, the influential role of the English instrument and its literature – in terms of keyboard idiom and compositional style – still remains something of a blind spot. This thesis attempts to address this imbalance by providing an overview of the most significant literature of the period, guided by the premise that the characteristics of the English instrument led to a style of keyboard writing that is distinct from the Viennese Classical style. The advent of the piano in England is traced, establishing the traits of the ‘English grand’ piano in the English harpsichord and other early instruments. This is followed by an overview of early piano concerti by James Hook, J.C. Bach, and Schroeter. Stylistic evolution in the early works of Clementi and Dussek is analysed, as well as that of Haydn’s London works. The thesis concludes with a chapter examining the interaction c. 1800 between the London and Viennese schools, demonstrating how contact with the more progressive London school precipitated changes in the Viennese keyboard style and the instrument itself.

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