Elliott Carter frequently organizes the formal design of his compositions with long-range polyrhythms, such that different parts of the texture move at different, slow tempi, often arranged so that their beats coincide exactly twice, at the beginning and the end of the piece. Many theorists have commented on these tempo ratios, and pointed out how they are manifested, on a smaller time scale, in each instrument’s notated beat divisions. However, building on the work of Link and Roeder, this paper shows that in Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux, Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux II, and Retrouvailles, pieces Carter dedicated to Pierre Boulez, the polyrhythms also guide the interactive behaviour of the instruments. Furthermore, it shows that although these works are all independently complete and coherent, together they can be understood as three movements of a trilogy, whereby the progression from simultaneous melodic parts that run independently of one another in Esprit I to the near-monophonic melody lines in Retrouvailles, as well as the increase in cooperative activity (for example, melody-sharing, and the mutual building of important harmonies) represent a theme of growing reconciliation.

Elliott Carter frequently organizes the formal design of his compositions with long-range polyrhythms, such that different parts of the texture move at different, slow tempi, often arranged so that their beats coincide exactly twice, at the beginning and the end of the piece. Many theorists have commented on these tempo ratios, and pointed out how they are manifested, on a smaller time scale, in each instrument’s notated beat divisions. However, building on the work of Link and Roeder, this paper shows that in Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux, Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux II, and Retrouvailles, pieces Carter dedicated to Pierre Boulez, the polyrhythms also guide the interactive behaviour of the instruments. Furthermore, it shows that although these works are all independently complete and coherent, together they can be understood as three movements of a trilogy, whereby the progression from simultaneous melodic parts that run independently of one another in Esprit I to the near-monophonic melody lines in Retrouvailles, as well as the increase in cooperative activity (for example, melody-sharing, and the mutual building of important harmonies) represent a theme of growing reconciliation.

Elliott Carter frequently organizes the formal design of his compositions with long-range polyrhythms, such that different parts of the texture move at different, slow tempi, often arranged so that their beats coincide exactly twice, at the beginning and the end of the piece. Many theorists have commented on these tempo ratios, and pointed out how they are manifested, on a smaller time scale, in each instrument’s notated beat divisions. However, building on the work of Link and Roeder, this paper shows that in Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux, Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux II, and Retrouvailles, pieces Carter dedicated to Pierre Boulez, the polyrhythms also guide the interactive behaviour of the instruments. Furthermore, it shows that although these works are all independently complete and coherent, together they can be understood as three movements of a trilogy, whereby the progression from simultaneous melodic parts that run independently of one another in Esprit I to the near-monophonic melody lines in Retrouvailles, as well as the increase in cooperative activity (for example, melody-sharing, and the mutual building of important harmonies) represent a theme of growing reconciliation. / Arts, Faculty of / Music, School of / Graduate

This project consists of an original composition, Voci Lontani, and a critical essay about the composition. In this piece, the idea of musical simultaneity is explored. Therefore, the piece focuses on the idea of contrast: between measured rhythms and indeterminate rhythms, between tonality and atonality, and between musics in separate tempos. In order to explore the significance of musical simultaneity, four important compositional concepts-the simultaneous juxtaposition of different musics, polyrhythmic structure, controlled indeterminacy, and quotation-are discussed. Also, several examples of twentieth-century music that use these concepts are analyzed in the essay.

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This thesis addresses the issues of how rhythm could be taught differently in the West, how the new methodology described here could impact the performance of rhythmically complex contemporary music as well as becoming the starting point of a new creative approach for improvisers and composers. The three main goals of this research are to describe South Indian (Karnatic) rhythmical concepts which could be considered sufficiently universal to be integrated with western classical and jazz aesthetics, to show how these techniques can be utilised to analyse and perform western contemporary music with more understanding and accuracy, and to demonstrate how these concepts can be integrated within a western creative framework, be it improvised or composed.

Polyrhythmic Landscapes: BodyDressCity explores the performative contiguity of body, garment and environment to reveal, frame and question how the city can be understood as a ‘space-in-action’, constructed of multiple rhythms and temporalities that occur in a multitude of places. Polyrhythm is a musical term for the simultaneous occurrence of two or more independent rhythms. This research seeks to fuse Bernard Tschumi’s event-space and rhythm, through an understanding of Henri Lefebvre’s ‘rhythmanalysis’ (Lefebvre, 2004, p. 1). In this project, I spatially conceptualize the combination of these terms as a polyrhythmic landscape. As a spatial designer I construct a series of embodied spatiotemporal interventions that employ performance as a dynamic, active, operative and responsive medium to reveal, frame and comprehend how the city can be a ‘polyrhythmic landscape’. The design-led project probes the disruptive effect of a female figure dressed in a monumental ten-metre red gown on the temporal condition of the city. As the public bears witness to the metamorphosis of the female figure, the spectacle of the dress confronts the everyday patterns and movements of the urban fabric. Has this glamorous flâneuse punctured the rhythmic skin of the city to reveal a polyrhythmic landscape?

The purpose of this thesis is to examine Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven (1996), and to scrutinize, through Christopher’s mental illness, the couched, unspoken, and deeply embedded presence of imperial hegemony in the Caribbean. I shall argue that Christopher’s mental illness is not, as one might have it, an inexplicable lapse into insanity, but both a fitting, polyrhythmic expression of longstanding postcolonial/neocolonial abuse, and a dynamic form of counterhegemonic resistance. Thus, my use of the term, imperial illness, refers to colonial impacts on the Caribbean, and how those impacts continue to play a significant role in postcolonial/neocolonial societies and, concurrently, the strategies imagined by postcolonial subjects to resist. Christopher’s mental illness, then, is the result of sustained imperial socio-psychological torment, which produces, quite ironically, the conditions that make possible his acts of resistance.