This PhD reports research on current representative performance paradigms using various interfaces for real time interaction with computer-based musical environments. Each device was selected to cover a particular range of interfaces. Research covers the following areas: hardware interfaces (tangible & game devices); live coding; optical devices, and hardware prototyping. The projects highlight affordances, comparative strengths and weaknesses, and provide suggestions for further improvements for each paradigm. Particular focus is given to the importance of mapping. Each project comprises corresponding software that was developed to facilitate each performance paradigm. The work is not intended to provide an exhaustive evaluation of the technology used in this research; instead, it aims to examine its feasibility for artistic and musical context. The outcomes of the examinations include a series of musical performances employing improvisation as the basis for composition. These paradigms are examined in a live context as well as fixed media that uses material originating in live performances.

M.A. (African Languages) / The purpose of this study is to make a critical evaluation of M.A. Kekana's Nnete fela applying the basic elements of a detective novel. Use will be made of the views of different scholars and authorities on the detective novel. Northern Sotho has very few books that can be said to be true detective novels. Attempts in this regard were made by, amongst others, D.N. Moloto with his work Tshipu e rile ke lebelo (1962), H.N.D. Bopape with his novel Lenong la gauta (1982) and V.M. Moloto with the book Letlapa la bophelo (1983). We also have very few works in Northern Sotho evaluating and criticising the detective novel, hence this humble attempt. The traditional approach will be used by which the features of a detective novel will be applied to the chosen text.

This thesis is an investigation into the influence of Weimar Berlin’s culture on British popular music of the 1970 and 1980s. The two eras are studied historically and artistically though the constant and ever-changing backdrop of the city of Berlin. The retrospective significance in postmodern terms is examined through music of David Bowie, Lou Reed and Kraftwerk and of the subcultures of punk and post-punk; their respective incorporation of elements, usually associated with ‘others’, reveals an alternative approach to artistic production in response to the ‘authentic’ American model. The breakdown of the divisions between diametrically opposed principles and ideologies is featured as artists consistently sought to erode boundaries. Chapter 1’Beyond Divine Symmetry’ looks at radical ideas in philosophy, politics and arts in the late-nineteenth century and World War I and the challenges brought to conservative forces. 2 ‘Willkommen in Berlin’ focuses on post-World War I socio-economic and political ramifications, on Berlin and corresponding art and leisure industries. 3 ‘Out and About’ continues reviewing the arts and culture of Weimar Berlin and the impact of new forms of art and technologies had on the city 4 ‘Officially Degenerate’ looks at art, music and other elements deemed ‘degenerate’ under the Third Reich, 5 ‘Traveling in Time’ compares the opposing ideologies of the East and West and the role of Berlin during the Cold War, 6 ‘David Bowie: The Changing Face of Influence’ refers to Bowie’s glam period and his most obvious use of references to Weimar, 7 ‘Berlin Personified: Lou Reed’ analyses Reed’s seminal albums of Transformer and Berlin 8 ‘German Irony: Kraftwerk’ scrutinizes the band’s inference that they were a continuance of Bauhaus, 9 ‘David Bowie: About Face’ looks at the artist’s years living and working in Berlin in the mid-1970s, 10 ‘England’s Projecting: Punk’ attempts to reveal why the subculture saw Weimar Berlin as comparable to mid-1970s London and 11 ‘Eye to I: Post-punk’ demonstrates how the evolved subculture created their musical-art by incorporating ideas from Berlin’s inter-war years to express Cold War induced anxiety.

The advent of sound recording in the late nineteenth-century has altered fundamentally how music is made, distributed and experienced. The technology around the record has advanced considerably since then, be it through improvements in sound quality, spatial presentation or listener convenience. The form of the sound-structure contained on the record, however, has seen very little change; it remains a fixed sound-structure encapsulated within a containing physical or virtual format. Presented here is a body of works that looks toward a next-generation record medium, one which embraces new currents of mobile digital technology and encompasses a change in how sonic content is presented to the listener: instead of containing a single predetermined and fixed sound-structure, this medium would have the capacity to vary the sound-structures it outputs, thereby offering new listening experiences on each playback. If developed correctly, this medium, which I call the open outcome record, might put into place the conditions necessary for a revolution in the creation and experiencing of recorded music. The submitted works are accompanied by this commentary, which begins with consideration of the effects on the musical experience of the fixity privilege, a characteristic common to all fixed media records. The discussion then turns towards the submitted works, with which I chart a path through strategies aimed at freeing the record from its inherent fixity: I start with the reanimation of commercial records by processes extrinsic to them; this is followed by an investigation into the union of recorded materials with live broadcast radio, through low-intervention, record-like interfaces; finally I present Futures EP, an open outcome record designed for the iOS platform, featuring variance-inducing processes that are invoked on playback. I conclude this research by defining the place of the open outcome record amongst other 'post-record' media, and how it might go on to affect our experience of music.

Presented through contextualisation of the portfolio works are developments of a practice in which the acts of programming and composition are intrinsically connected. This practice-based research (conducted 2009–2013) explores visual representation of sound in computer music software. Towards greater understanding of composing with the software medium, initial questions are taken as stimulus to explore the subject through artistic practice and critical thinking. The project begins by asking: How might the ways in which sound is visually represented influence the choices that are made while those representations are being manipulated and organised as music? Which aspects of sound are represented visually, and how are those aspects shown? Recognising sound as a psychophysical phenomenon, the physical and psychological aspects of aesthetic interest to my work are identified. Technological factors of mediating these aspects for the interactive visual-domain of software are considered, and a techno-aesthetic understanding developed. Through compositional studies of different approaches to the problem of looking at sound in software, on screen, a number of conceptual themes emerge in this work: the idea of software as substance, both as a malleable material (such as in live coding), and in terms of outcome artefacts; the direct mapping between audio data and screen pixels; the use of colour that maintains awareness of its discrete (as opposed to continuous) basis; the need for integrated display of parameter controls with their target data; and the tildegraph concept that began as a conceptual model of a gramophone and which is a spatio-visual sound synthesis technique related to wave terrain synthesis. The spiroid-frequency-space representation is introduced, contextualised, and combined both with those themes and a bespoke geometrical drawing system (named thisis), to create a new modular computer music software environment named sdfsys.

This thesis examines the late medieval English carol, an important indigenous musical form that is abundant in a number of sources from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth century, both with and without extant musical notation. Carols with musical notation have been favoured by musicologists in previous research. This thesis however, provides a new context for the study of the carol by also including a close investigation of those carols without extant musical notation; thus presenting a fuller picture of the genre than that of previous musicological studies. The carol has been somewhat neglected in terms of recent, detailed, published research, therefore this study addresses the reasons for its neglect, and reveals a broader understanding of the genre. It applies a combination of traditional and modern methodologies: empirical research, gender study and ethnomusicological research, in order to place the carol genre in clearer social, political and religious contexts and better understand its place and use in late medieval society. Through the application of these methodologies, this thesis provides an important perspective on the place of women, not only in the carols, but also within broader social and musical contexts, revealing a complex picture of their place in medieval music as subjects, performers and composers. Suggestions for the use of carols in sermons and other forms of worship are also made, and the carol’s value as a vehicle for political commentary and English nationalism in this period is demonstrated. By approaching the carol in this manner, this study takes us beyond the popular perception of it as a genre merely for the amusement of educated clerics, instead revealing an important, popular musical form that was found in all strata of society.

The aim of this commentary, which accompanies a folio of electroacoustic/acousmatic, instrumental and mixed compositions, is to investigate the relationship of instrumental and acousmatic compositional practices and to find common integrating structural strategies. These practices are also related to the handling and organization of disparate and large amounts of sound information in both media. Multi-dimensional aural spaces are very common in both instrumental and acousmatic media when timbre becomes a dynamic and form shaping parameter. The listener may perceive the musical discourse in multi-dimensional musical spaces through multiple perceptional modes. A musical syntax of those - usually indeterminate and ambiguous - aural spaces may be achieved through a hybridization of interconnected temporal concepts, connected to motion, gesture and shape, and spatial concepts, connected to sound source and timbre. The narrative structure of the musical discourse is linked to conceptualizations of physical and conceptual musical spaces through cognitive schemas and patterns and can be approached through visual and spatial metaphors that resemble film and TV montage structures. A sound montage theory provides a basic framework for the organization of narrative structure in sound composition.

There is a general perception that Gerhard’s late, modernist, style was due to a radical change of direction around the time of his First Symphony. This thesis argues that in fact several important elements integral to this ’new’ style are traceable in works as early as Dos apunts and Seven Haiku of 1921-22, and that during the intervening years Gerhard was exploring, expanding and accumulating the techniques which eventually enabled him to realise the potential of his sonic imagination. The first part of the thesis will discuss Gerhard’s origins in early twentieth century Catalonia, during the Catalan revival, with its modernisme and noucentisme, and the way in which these factors are reflected in his attitudes. In the second section the works selected will be placed in a biographical and musical context and analysed in order to demonstrate three aspects of his works. The first is that Gerhard approached each one as a separate exercise, using different methods in the most appropriate manner and disregarding questions of dogma. The second, that many of these techniques originate in the practices of the preceding generation, particularly Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Pedrell and Bartók, in addition to absorbing and applying significant elements from Catalan and Spanish traditional music. Comparators will be cited to demonstrate these facts. The final intent is to show that as the methods are applied they are explored and expanded to meet his own particular requirements and the resulting synthesis equipped him to realise their potential in his late style, fully exploited for the first time in the first movement of the First Symphony. This thesis deals with compositions preceding this work in order to demonstrate that despite the apparently disparate nature of Gerhard’s output between 1921 and 1953 there is a consistent attitude in his approach extending into the later stages of his life.

I use the term ‘Sonic Phantoms’ to refer as a whole to a cohesive collection of sound compositions that I have developed over the past five years (2009-2014; fifty pieces, structured in four separate collections / series), dealing at a fundamental level with perceptual auditory illusions. For the creation of this compositional body of work, I have developed a syncretic approach that encompasses and coalesces all kinds of sources, materials, techniques and compositional tools: voices (real and synthetic), field recordings (involving wilderness expeditions worldwide), instrument manipulation (including novel ways of ‘preparation’), object amplification, improvisation and recording studio techniques. This manifests a sonic-based and perceptive-based understanding of the compositional work, as an implicitly proposed paradigm for any equivalent work in terms of its trans-technological, phenomena-based nature. By means of the collection of pieces created and the research and contextualisation presented, my work with ‘Sonic Phantoms’ aims at bringing into focus, shaping and defining a specific and dedicated compositional realm that considers auditory illusions as essential components of the work and not simply mere side effects. I play with sonic materials that are either naturally ambiguous or have been composed to attain this quality, in order to exploit the potential for apophenia to manifest, bringing with it the ‘phantasmatic’ presence. Both my compositions and research work integrate and synergise a considerable number of disparate musical traditions (Western and non-Western), techno-historical moments (from ancient / archaic to electronic / computer-age techniques), cultural frameworks (from ‘serious’ to ‘popular’), and fields of interest / expertise (from the psychological to the musical), into a personal and cohesive compositional whole. All these diverse elements are not simply mentioned or referenced, but have rather defined, structured and formed the resulting compositional work.

Since Astor Piazzolla’s death in 1992, his 6 Tango-Etudes pour flûte seule (1987) have quickly entered the flute oeuvre to become standard Western ‘classical’ concert repertoire, despite their association with tango as the core of their musical style. Though Piazzolla’s music has much musical appeal abroad, performative differences exist between ‘foreign’ and Argentinean musical interpretations of the tango – and by extension to the performance of this score – due to various misappropriations of both the notation and the cultural background, which have often been used to suggest an ‘authentic’ reading. As a way to bridge the gap between the two styles, the current tango performance literature largely focuses on didactic, imitative approaches to the genre, with only limited discussion of how various essential cultural references might pragmatically influence an interpretation of Piazzolla’s published repertoire. This thesis addresses ways in which the ‘authentic’ has been constructed in the tango genre in a variety of contexts both in Argentina and abroad, and how this understanding can suggest a new reading of the score of Piazzolla’s 6 Etudes. Current discussions from the field of (ethno)musicology as well as other disciplines within the social sciences are incorporated. The quantitative approaches used draw upon a wide range of performance analyses for understanding Piazzolla’s own performances, and those from tango and western players. The author’s field work in Buenos Aires and experience as a conservatoire-trained flautist is combined with various qualitative discourse analyses. Initial concepts of what constitutes a pure cultural setting of Piazzolla’s scores are challenged, and then expanded from current viewpoints to include various vital cultural practices inseparable from the notation. New approaches to the interpretational processes that are currently found to exist among western flautists when performing this work are pragmatically demonstrated so as to encourage fresh renditions of not only the 6 Etudes, but also Piazzolla’s other compositions from the same period.