This practice-led project examines opera in light of the current critical attention to animals, both real and metaphorical, and their often hidden or overlooked presences in human culture. Despite their near ubiquity in our lives, animals have only recently become the subjects of serious intellectual inquiry, and the field of animal studies is a rapidly-evolving discipline, with scholars like Keith Thomas and Harriet Ritvo considering animals as active participants in human lives and histories. Opera as a form has always concerned itself with meetings between the human and the not-human; Orpheus, the semi-divine hero of the earliest operas, subdues both gods and wild beasts through his music. It is therefore curious that no serious study of opera in relation to animals and animality has yet been undertaken. For the first part of this project I have been examining the extensive representation of animals in opera over the 400 years of its existence to understand the changing forms and meanings of animals in opera. The voice is central to opera, and a closer consideration of the voice as the locus of human and non-human difference reinvigorates the debate about operatic representation, reinforcing opera's status as the ultimate humanist art form while exposing the vulnerability of this position in an era when humanism itself is increasingly called into question. A synthetic opera-animal approach casts important light on some concerns which are central to both fields: the porous, shifting boundary between human and non-human animals (and the way in which mimesis and performance further reinforce or erode those boundaries, building on work by Ritvo and Erica Fudge, Deleuze and Agamben); questions of anthropomorphism and authenticity as addressed by Steve Baker; notions of wonder, the metaphysical, and the uncanny as explored by Abbate and Tomlinson; even the politics and ethics of performance-as-animal. Practical research is also central to this project, which explores, through a portfolio of documented workshops and performances, the opportunities and necessities occasioned by the creation of a new post-human music theatre that articulates and confronts head-on our own animality, moving beyond a modernism which defines itself in opposition to the animal. In fact, as public discourse turns more and more to the sciences rather than to the arts for answers to the fundamental questions of human and animal nature, animal-opera is an obvious territory on which these two epistemological frameworks, scientific and artistic, can coexist - or collide - revealing how animals might be regarded not simply as passive carriers of imposed human meaning, but generators of meaning in their own right. The main project realised through this process of experimentation is Arthropoda, a collection of works based on the life stories of arthropods. The choice of animal is not arbitrary - their phylogenetic distance, their problematic bodies, their simultaneous familiarity and utter alienness supply particular representational challenges beyond those of more easily anthropomorphised creatures. The first work from this series, Phthirus, a cantata for human singers as human parasites, has underlined some of the limitations of traditional anthropomorphic representations, while new developments in the field of insect communication have suggested radical new directions that push the boundaries of opera as a form. A reconfigured examination of animal lives and bodies offers new source material, such as the bizarre lifestyle of the parasitic barnacle Sacculina; new musical dramaturgies, in the repurposing of entomological classics as performance texts; even new ways of producing and perceiving musical sound, such as the tymbalum, a biomimetic musical instrument based on cicada physiology. Each of these approaches seeks to bridge the perceptual divide between human and arthropod.

This study provides new insights concerning the development of professional identity in instrumental teachers working in a range of professional contexts in the UK. The analysis shows the extent to which musicians are embedded in the culture of instrumental music education, suggesting that aspects of the field, including high levels of autonomy, are more closely related to professional identity than notions of hierarchy and status. The understandings of instrumental teachers’ lives and identities revealed in this research could be used to inform and enhance existing approaches to careers in music and contribute to career preparation in undergraduate music students. Using an explanatory sequential research design to combine data from a national survey of instrumental teachers with findings from individual case study interviews and one focus group, the research prioritises the lived experience of participants in generating understanding of professional lives and identities in this context. An analysis using Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, field and capital examines the ways in which individuals negotiate the field of instrumental music education, revealing a complex and nuanced approach to professional identity developed through practical experience in this context. Instrumental teaching in the UK is characterised by a lack of regulation and curriculum, where individuals are able to teach with no training or qualification (Swanwick 1994, Woodford 2002). The literature suggests conflict in instrumental teacher identity where individuals prefer to identify as musicians or performers rather than teachers, attributing these choices to the lower professional status of instrumental teaching in the hierarchy of professional roles in music (Mills 2004b, Roberts 2007). This research however suggests that expressions of identity in this context relate to specific meanings associated with the role and identity of professional musician for individuals involved in portfolio careers involving teaching and highlights the need to revise existing notions of the professional musician to acknowledge contemporary careers in music.

My main research was to write a theatrical work combining Japanese text with music that is to be performed as ‘shadow play' theatre. This was my first attempt to create such a large-scale work, writing both the music and the text. There have been discoveries during the process of working on this large project. Most significant was my awareness of what makes my creation more ‘individual' or ‘original' as a composer. Personal experiences and background are basically reflected on determinations of what is to be written next and how to process materials. In my case, these determinations often come out of my experience of the mixed cultural environment which is that of Japan, even if it is not my intention to be ‘Japanese'. Among the elements behind Japanese culture, I discovered key words which are time, space, colour and nuance, and these, particularly, became my strong concerns. The portfolio comprises seven works which I composed during the research period, which was from 2004 until 2010. The first part of this commentary will be a description of my thoughts on composition, particularly on what made my works individual and original. In the second part, I will be focusing on the details of my main work Kosatsuki for shadow play. The portfolio comprises the following seven pieces. • dialogues for ensemble (2004) • The brother sun, the sister moon for cello and piano (2005) • In the Gray Dawn for orchestra (2006) • The moon out of the blue for ensemble (2007) • Echoes from the inland sea for string quartet (2007) • Song of the Muro Women for voice and piano (2008) • Kosatsuki for shadow play theatre (2010) comprising a script and a score Recordings of the following pieces are also found on the CD enclosed. [mp3 files encoded and apended here] • dialogues for ensemble (2004) • The brother sun, the sister moon for cello and piano (2005) • The moon out of the blue for ensemble (2007).

Musical culture is increasingly globalised and technology allows us to engage with an evermore diversified range of musical approaches, traditions and sound-worlds. How composers react to this diversity of musical approaches is an important theme in contemporary composition. My approach to composition within this globalised situation has been to focus on the notion of ‘integration' and creating structurally consistent score-based frameworks. I have composed a portfolio of work that reflects the central focus of ‘integration', concentrating on three inter-related research areas: 1. Exploring how one can integrate or frame improvisation and/or electronics into notated structural frameworks. 2. Exploring the use of technology to translate or integrate material generated through improvisation into notational practice. 3. Developing a coherent and individual technique and aesthetic that draws on structural influences from a range of musical idioms, but never resorts to cliché or pastiche. My exploration of integration in writing the compositions in this portfolio has been primarily technical. I am fundamentally interested in the ‘nuts and bolts' of composition, how musical materials can fit together and interact. Therefore although the character and substance of the different materials I engage with is important, my foremost preoccupations when composing are the formal and technical aspects such as: structure and proportion; pitch and rhythmic organisation; orchestration technique; the use of extended notations; and compositional processes such as abstraction, permutation and rotation. As I outline in my commentary the composition in this portfolio reflects my aesthetic position that working with an eclectic range of musical materials and diverse methods of expression such as improvisation and electronics is not an end-in-itself. By integrating diverse musical influences I am not trying to create a pluralist synthesis of different semantic paradigms, but aim to find my own innovative, coherent and consistent compositional approach.