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This practice-based research articulates a performer's perspective from within the rapidly expanding field of mixed music, wherein traditional acoustic instruments are augmented by means of live electronics. Contemporary technology presents a panoply of sonic and interactive affordances and diverse avenues of potential for a contemporary practice of the clarinet. Pursuing a move from a technically passive approach towards self-efficient onstage operation, the author articulates a journey in which a hybridity of instrumental expertise and technical naivety develops into an embedded practice. A framework of humanising is proposed to establish codes of practice based on the embodied skill and priorities of the onstage performer. A pragmatic and personal approach emerges to managing issues of sound, control, and engagement, with an emphasis on viable rehearsal and performance practices that ultimately privilege an ongoing attention to liveness. The portfolio of sound recordings and the observances contained in this thesis contribute to a growing body of performer-led accounts in a rich environment for the development of new creative work and collaboration, and to facilitating access to interactive music for performers wishing to explore the field. A set of case studies trace three broad roles across a spectrum of creative agency within an interdisciplinary practice of the clarinet, situated at a nexus of diverse approaches - from performing composed works (executant interpreter) to non-idiomatic free improvisation (enactive composer), via hybrid works that blur these authorial distinctions (enabled interpreter). Negotiating multiple, interdependent influences within these respective performance ecologies, and moving over time from a status of technical novice towards one of proficiency and expertise (Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1980), a growing sense of embodied instrumentality is encountered (Nijs et al. 2009). The additional technology becomes less an extension of the instrument, rather the performer becomes present in a new holistic entity (Riva 2009; Rebelo 2006), with an attendant, ongoing re-evaluation of personal sound concept. Instrumental musicianship is reframed as inhabiting an assemblage of tools that filter and resonate physical energy, identity, and culture, and is directed towards an optimal performing presence.

Dutch composer Peter Schat’s (1935-2003) pursuit of a compositional system that could generate and preserve intervallic relationships, while allowing the composer as much flexibility as possible to manipulate musical material, led him to develop the tone-clock system. Fundamentally comprised of the twelve possible trichords, the tone clock permits each to generate a complete twelve-tone series through the “steering” principle, a concept traced to Boulez’s technique of pitch-class set multiplication. This study serves as an overview of Schat’s tone-clock system and focuses primarily on the effects of the steering function in “Genen” (2000). Furthermore, I expand on the tone-clock system by combining transformational theory with Julian Hook’s uniform triadic transformations and my proposed STEER and STEERS functions, which express the procedures of the steering principle as a mathematical formula. Using a series of transformational networks, I illustrate the unifying effect steering has on different structural levels in “Genen,” a post-tonal composition.

Forgotten Lyres is a musical response to Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem Mutability, which depicts the fragility and unpredictable nature of human life. Four independent chamber ensembles make up the performing forces of Forgotten Lyres; the musicians evoke the topics of Shelley's text as they interact and coordinate with one another according to a variety of paradigms and without the use of a conductor. This essay focuses on the approaches to coordination within and between ensembles, and the ways in which the musicians' interactions can evoke and convey Shelley's texts. The essay also examines works by Mel Powell, Toru Takemitsu, Witold Lutoslawski, and Pierre Boulez as examples and precursors for the coordination strategies employed in Forgotten Lyres.

A partir d'une interprétation musicologique de la notion scientifique de "modélisation et simulation'', cette thèse présente une approche d'analyse assistée par ordinateur où les partitions musicales sont reconstruites à partir de processus algorithmiques et simulées avec différents paramètres à partir desquels des variantes, appelés instances, sont générés. L'étude d'une pièce musicale par modélisation et simulation signifie comprendre l'oeuvre en la (re) composant de nouveau, en brouillant les limites entre le travail analytique et créatif. Cette approche est appliquée à trois études de cas: 1. une technique isolée, la "multiplication d'accords'', utilisé par Pierre Boulez (1925- 2016), qui a été explorée à travers le prisme formé par les théories de H. Hanson, S. Heinemann et L. Koblyakov; 2. La pièce "Spectral Canon pour Conlon Nancarrow" (1974) du compositeur américain James Tenney (1934-2006) à laquelle la simulation computationnelle à partir de différents paramètres a été prise à ses conséquences ultimes quand un "espace d'instances" est explorée a partir de stratégies de visualisation graphique; 3. Et enfin "Désordre" (1985), le première étude pour piano de l'austro-hongrois György Ligeti (1923-2006) dans laquelle les concepts de "tonalité combinatoire" et "décomposition en nombres premiers'', appliqué aux durées, ont été utilisés pour maximiser le potentiel de production d'instances. / From a musicological interpretation of the scientific notion of “modeling and simulation”, this thesis presents an approach for computer-aided analysis where musical scores are reconstructed from algorithmic processes and then simulated with different sets of parameters from which neighbouring variants, called instances, are generated. Studying a musical piece by modelling and simulation means to understand the work by (re)composing it again, blurring boundaries between analytical and creative work. This approach is applied to three case studies: an isolated technique, Pierre Boulez Chord Multiplication, which is explored through the prism formed by the theories of H. Hanson, S. Heinemann and L. Koblyakov; the piece Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow (1974) by the american James Tenney (1934-2006) to which the computational simulation from different sets of parameters was taken to its ultimate consequences when a “space of instances” is created and strategies of visualisation and exploration are devised; and finally “Disorder”, the first piano study written by austro-hungarian György Ligeti in which the concepts of “combinatorial tonality” and “decomposition prime numbers”, applied to durations, are used to maximize the potential that a model has to produce different variations of the original piece.

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No description available.

No description available.