A radical transformation is taking place in today’s society with the rapid
developments in digital technology. The digital dispersion of information occurs globally
at an unprecedented speed, altering innumerable aspects of cultural memory to the extent
that the experience of cyclical time of ritual culture is gradually replaced by the
prevalence of linear time of progress and chaotic time of computerized processes. As a
result, both formation and experience of meaning are changed.
With that, an important question arises with regards to music: how does musical meaning
transpire in contemporary culture?
As a theoretical companion to my compositional work, this doctoral dissertation
addresses this question from the perspective of memory. Based on the idea that musical
meaning is informed through its contextualization within the manifold intersections of
memory, cultural memory, and digital technology, its first three chapters explore the
relationships between memory and identity, externalized memory and culture, time and
meaning in music, and how these relationships can inform musical analysis. The fourth
chapter provides analytical approaches to compositions by Luciano Berio, Helmut
Lachenmann, John Cage, and Pierluigi Billone informed by the conclusions gained from
the previous chapters.
The last three chapters focus on the added complexity of the relationships
between musical memory and cultural memory as impacted by digital technologies. It
will be explored how digital processes affect various aspects of musical memory and
musical time. Correspondingly, the final chapter offers musical analyses of compositions
with live electronics by composers Brian Ferneyhough and Jonathan Harvey, and the
dissertation will be concluded by an analysis of my dissertation composition #ffffff which
is appended.
Central to the investigation are the post-structuralist ideas of philosophers Bernard
Stiegler, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, as well as theories regarding
cultural memory brought forth by Jan and Aleida Assmann. In order to apply these
concepts to an examination of music, they will be reconciled with the musical philosophy
of Gunnar Hindrichs, the musical semiotics of Jean-Jacques Nattiez, the cultural
semiotics of Roland Posner, and the critical media studies of Wolfgang Ernst. / Graduate / 0413 / annette.mailbox@gmx.net
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/6953 |
| Date | 17 December 2015 |
| Creators | Brosin, Annette |
| Contributors | Butterfield, Christopher |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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