This paper presents an overview of the concepts and strategies in the original composition, The Harbour of Incense, a cycle of three movements for different groups of instruments. Each movement addresses an aspect of the musical cultures of Hong Kong. The first movement Taan Go for Harp Solo explores the sound world of the folk genre saltwater song; the second movement Jat1 Wun2 Sai3 Ngau4 Naam5 Min6 for Flute and Piano highlights the musicality of Cantonese language; the third movement Daa Zaai for Oboe, Clarinet in B-flat, Bassoon, and Percussion, is inspired by the keyi music used in the Taoist funeral. The paper discusses how to bring together Southeast Asian aesthetics and contemporary Western compositional techniques, as well as how to communicate this unique cultural experience to performers and audiences from other backgrounds. It provides the transcriptions of two saltwater songs and an excerpt of keyi music, and illustrate how they inform the structures, textures, and melodic gestures of the composition. The nine tones of Cantonese language are also explored for generating melodic materials, metric plans, and articulation writing.

This practice-based research is concerned with a collection of fixed media compositions written between 2005 and 2012 with accompanying contextual writing. The primary focus of this research was to produce sound works, but the concept of place has played a significant role throughout both the compositional process and in the reflection of each composition. This research explores how place is ‘heard and felt’ (Feld, 2005) in a composition and how recollected memory impacts on the compositional process. Artistic decisions made with regard to creating the compositions reflect my personal place and associations with these sound materials at a given time whether they are field recordings or synthesised materials. The way in which sound material is subsequently processed and structured reflects this. Place and the compositional practice inform each other in a two-way process. This results in what Katharine Norman (2010) has referred to in her writing on sound art as an ‘autoethnographic’ journey; a representation of the creator’s personal experience. I have begun to reflect on these compositions as art works that represent a particular time or place. The artwork represents the trace of the place from which it was composed (Corringham, 2010). I believe that I cannot totally transport a person to my place; rather, I intend this creative representation to enable the listener to create and inspire their own narrative.

Since the first Scottish Gaelic-speaking settlers arrived in Nova Scotia in the late 18th century, their Gaelic singing tradition has been an integral part of life in communities on Cape Breton Island. With the waning of the Gaelic language, however, came efforts to collect and preserve the song tradition, and the intention to pass it along intact. This dissertation eschews the consideration of Gaelic singing as a monolithic tradition with a common repertoire and experience, and instead examines it as a multifaceted process enacted by individuals in three main sites: home, public performance and the archive. It examines the various ways the practice manifests itself, concluding that memory and individual agency are constants, both for singers and listeners. Through interviews, participant-observer activity and archival research, this study demonstrates that Gaelic singers have been far from passive culture-bearers but have instead actively shaped their song practice by choosing repertoire, melody variants and texts. It also discusses the dynamic role of memory and social interaction in the transmission and performance of Gaelic song. Memories of other singers, discussion of the text, and contextual details draw singers and listeners into a community that is both synchronic and diachronic. This practice is chiefly oral, but is supported by recordings and printed songbooks as well as an array of objects – photo albums, clippings, tapes – which evoke the sense of previous performances and their singers. Despite their intention to transmit the songs with little or no change, singers have a flexible relationship with the material and in some cases subvert the authority of recorded or printed sources by turning instead to first-hand experiences. This simultaneous presence of past and present has tremendous implications for what it means to know a song, and one comes to understand it as a composite of multiple memories, performances and meanings.

Since the first Scottish Gaelic-speaking settlers arrived in Nova Scotia in the late 18th century, their Gaelic singing tradition has been an integral part of life in communities on Cape Breton Island. With the waning of the Gaelic language, however, came efforts to collect and preserve the song tradition, and the intention to pass it along intact. This dissertation eschews the consideration of Gaelic singing as a monolithic tradition with a common repertoire and experience, and instead examines it as a multifaceted process enacted by individuals in three main sites: home, public performance and the archive. It examines the various ways the practice manifests itself, concluding that memory and individual agency are constants, both for singers and listeners. Through interviews, participant-observer activity and archival research, this study demonstrates that Gaelic singers have been far from passive culture-bearers but have instead actively shaped their song practice by choosing repertoire, melody variants and texts. It also discusses the dynamic role of memory and social interaction in the transmission and performance of Gaelic song. Memories of other singers, discussion of the text, and contextual details draw singers and listeners into a community that is both synchronic and diachronic. This practice is chiefly oral, but is supported by recordings and printed songbooks as well as an array of objects – photo albums, clippings, tapes – which evoke the sense of previous performances and their singers. Despite their intention to transmit the songs with little or no change, singers have a flexible relationship with the material and in some cases subvert the authority of recorded or printed sources by turning instead to first-hand experiences. This simultaneous presence of past and present has tremendous implications for what it means to know a song, and one comes to understand it as a composite of multiple memories, performances and meanings.