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Strange flowers : cultivating new music for gamelan on British soil

This thesis explores new music created for gamelan in Britain, focusing primarily upon works for Javanese gamelan. It explores the historical conditions and human motivations which have made composition for gamelan such a distinctive part of the UK scene, and explores the range of works created through a series of taxonomical spectra. It considers how composers writing for gamelan in the UK situate themselves amongst the transcultural influences they are at play with in their composition. This is explored through a variety of lenses: looking at how composers use, avoid or mix musical structures associated with gamelan and those from other systems; whether or not they draw upon creative processes and methods of transmission associated with traditional gamelan music; and what happens when gamelan instruments are combined with those from other systems or with electronically-generated sound. It also explores narratives of authenticity and hybridity, and the interrelationship between British gamelan composition and the wider cultural scene. It questions the extent to which the British gamelan scene is distinct from other international gamelan communities, and the extent to which it is not, suggesting that the appearance of difference is in fact more of an inflection, coloured by local conditions, history and individuals, but nevertheless an expression of the same contemporary trans-state cosmopolitan flows (Turino 2003) that characterise gamelan cultures around the world.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:617271
Date January 2014
CreatorsHouse, Ginevra
ContributorsSorrell, Neil
PublisherUniversity of York
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/6793/

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