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‘I AM A TEXTURAL COMPOSER’: JANE STANLEY ON THE CREATIVE PROCESS, IMMERSIVE TEXTURES, GLOW AND A NEW SONG CYCLE Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-28 Jane Stanley, Judith Bishop
This is the transcript of an interview with Glasgow-based Australian composer Dr Jane Stanley. The interviewer is Dr Judith Bishop, an Australian poet and lyricist whose words appear in two of the works discussed: ‘14 Weeks’ (from Interval (UQP, 2018) and ‘The Indifferent’ (from Event (Salt Publishing UK, 2007)). The interview was recorded at the University of Glasgow on 29 May 2023 and edited for
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THINKING ALOUD: THE SOLILOQUY CYCLE Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-28 Thomas Simaku
Beginning with Soliloquy I for solo violin in 1998, the author has been engaged in creating a series of highly virtuosic solo pieces for various instruments. Each piece presents a different character, yet all are framed by a single protagonist who narrates in different languages.This article focuses particularly on analyses of Soliloquies II, VI, VII, VIII and IX, but also offers a discussion of the
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TRANSFORMING PRACTICE WITH DIGITAL SCORES: DEVELOPMENTS AND CHALLENGES IN A TRANSCONTINENTAL RESIDENCY Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-28 Jaslyn Robertson, Solomiya Moroz, Cat Hope, Craig Vear, Iran Sanadzadeh, Helen Svoboda, Chloë Sobek
This article examines how practice-based researchers in a transcontinental intensive residency transformed their practice and developed their skills through composing digital scores. Four researchers from an Australian university undertook an intensive residency in Hamburg, focused on creating and performing new digital scores. An analytical study of this residency was conducted, centred around each
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GETTING OUT OF THE LABYRINTH: GERALD BARRY'S WIENER BLUT AND THE PATH TO PETRA VON KANT Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-28 Mark Fitzgerald
Gerald Barry's approach to composition has undergone a number of changes. Frequently these developments coincide with the composition of a large-scale opera. One of these points of transition in his output occurs in the period before he commenced work on The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Between 1999 and 2000 Barry composed three works – 1998, The Eternal Recurrence and Wiener Blut – in which he
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MOVEMENTS OF A MUSICIAN WORKING: PHILL NIBLOCK (1933–2024) Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-28 Harald Muenz, Anton Lukoszevieze, Eleanor Cully Boehringer, Walter Zimmermann, Phil Maguire
In February 2011 the Brunel Sound Series hosted Phill Niblock at Brunel University London, a memorable visit expertly orchestrated by our late colleague Bob Gilmore.1 The occasion featured Phill's Disseminate and the premiere of his TWO LIPS aka Nameless, led by Bob. As an amateur clarinet player, in an ensemble made up of Brunel staff and students, I had the privilege of delving into the intricacies
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PROPORTION AND SYMMETRY AS MUTUAL ANTAGONISTS IN TUNING: SOME QUARTER-TONE RESOURCES Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-28 Joe Bates
Quarter-tones have the dubious honour of being the microtonal default in Western art music, yet they have been of little recent interest to those most involved with extended intonation. Other microtonal equal divisions have appealed as pragmatic approximations of consonant just-intonation intervals, something that quarter-tones do not offer. This article proposes that quarter-tones can be valued in
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HABITUS, RESISTANCE AND THE PRODUCTION OF MUSICAL MEANING Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-28 Niamh Dell
This article defines and explores the concept of ‘resistance’ as a source of musical meaning in performance. Using Pierre Bourdieu's concept of ‘habitus’ as a framework, I examine my musical habitus: the embodied, internalised ways I play my instrument and think about music, which reflect my extensive musical histories and the fields in which these histories have taken place. Resistance arises in practice
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NEW MUSIC AND SUSTAINABILITY Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-28 Christopher Fox
This article proposes a series of connections between the consumption of resources, the creation of new music and ideas about sustainability. A number of examples is discussed, from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, that illustrate the ways in which conspicuous, and often ethically questionable, consumption has been a signifier for innovation in new music. The article concludes by introducing
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SEATON SNOOK AND THE BUILDING OF A PARAFICTIONAL SEASIDE TOWN Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-01 Peter Falconer
Seaton Snook was a thriving community of fishermen, blacksmiths, teachers, seacoalers, labourers and musicians on the coast of County Durham, UK. After 1968, however, government records and newspaper reports referring to the town cease and there are, apparently, no former residents still living. This article outlines the creation of What Happened to Seaton Snook?, an internet-based archive of sounds
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IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU: DO WE STILL NEED AN ‘ARTISTIC VOICE’? Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-01 Matthew Shlomowitz
This article considers the possibility that the emphasis we place on composers developing an artistic voice might be unhelpful for making good pieces. I look at what constitutes an artistic voice and consider pros and cons for having a voice. As an alternative I examine strengths and weaknesses for being a capricious composer, which I define as a willingness to explore different compositional avenues
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REFLECTIONS ON CYBORG COLLABORATIONS: CROSS-DISCIPLINARY COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE IN TECHNOLOGICALLY-FOCUSED CONTEMPORARY MUSIC Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-01 Zubin Kanga, Mark Dyer, Caitlin Rowley, Jonathan Packham
Creating new works combining live musicians with new technologies provides both opportunities and challenges. The Cyborg Soloists research project has commissioned and managed the creation of 46 new works of this type, assembling teams of composers, performers, researchers and technology partners from industry. The majority of these collaborations have been smooth-running and fruitful, but a few have
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HELMUT LACHENMANN'S SALUT FÜR CAUDWELL (1977) TODAY: BETWEEN STRUCTURE AND ASSEMBLAGE, BETWEEN INTERPRETATION AND EXPERIMENTATION Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-01 Diego Castro Magas
The recent new edition of Helmut Lachenmann's Salut für Caudwell (1977) published in Breitkopf & Härtel (2020) by guitarist-researcher Seth Josel has renewed public attention on this seminal work from contemporary guitar literature. As a performer myself, I first performed the piece in 2008 (its Chilean premiere) and have recently premiered the new edition. Performing this piece in a concert situation
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NOTATION AND IMPROVISATION: NOTATIONAL PRAXIS IN THE WORK OF THE ICP, SARAH BRAND AND MOSS FREED Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-01 Alistair Zaldua
This article examines the relationship between notation and improvisation and the ways in which notational representation and prescription are extended by para-notation in the work and practice of the improvisers Sarah Brand and Moss Freed and in the work of ethnomusicologist Floris Schuiling, in particular through his research into the Dutch collective, the Instant Composers Pool (ICP). Sarah Brand
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REHEARSING TIME Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-01 Lea Luka Sikau
This article explores the times and datedness of new opera. When referring to an opera (20**) the bracketed number that follows the composition title usually refers to the date of composition or the first performance. When asked how many times an opera was played, its interpreters tend to refer to the number of performances, not the number of instances of rehearsal and individual practice. These times
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NEW LIMINALITIES: BEAT FURRER AT 70 Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Ed Cooper
‘Liminal’, from the Latin limen, denotes both thresholds and, curiously, the home. Since its original use by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in 1909 to label the central stage in a transformational rite of passage, the term has been used in very many contexts: from writings concerning sociology within both local and global contexts to an internet aesthetic of eerie empty spaces, a sort of loose
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IDENTITY THROUGH DIFFERENCE IN BEAT FURRER'S LOTÓFAGOS Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Ed Cooper
In Homer's The Odyssey, Odysseus and his men are on their way home to Ithaca when they land on a remote island inhabited by lotus-eaters. The locals share their indolent-making lotus plants with the Greeks, such that the troops’ homeward journey is disrupted and they find themselves in a state of limbo. Identities, both individual and communal, become entangled and blurred. Beat Furrer takes these
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TIME, MYTH AND NARRATIVE IN BEAT FURRER'S NUUN Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Gabriel Jones
The title of Beat Furrer's nuun, for two pianos and chamber orchestra (1996), invites two principal readings. As a pun on the German ‘nun’, meaning ‘now’, it invokes a presentist mode of musical thinking, whereby each moment is heard to exist in a continuous state of development. It also invokes myth, as suggested by Wolfgang Fuhrmann, in its palindromic reflection of the name of the Breton goddess
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SNOW, REPETITION AND OBLIVION: ECOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS IN BEAT FURRER'S RECENT WORK Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Christine Dysers
The natural world is a frequent touchstone for the Swiss-born Austrian composer Beat Furrer. In the operatic work Violetter Schnee (2019), for instance, images of snow and coldness take on a central role. Other works, such as Wüstenbuch (2009) and the Spazio Immergente triptych (2015), refer more indirectly to notions of barren landscapes and ecological excess. At the basis of all these works are sentiments
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LISTENING INTERTEXTUALLY IN BEAT FURRER'S MUSIC THEATRE WORKS Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Lauren Redhead
This article focuses on three of Beat Furrer's works described as opera or music theatre: Begehren (2001), FAMA (2005) and Wüstenbuch (2010). Each of these pieces sets texts from Roman, contemporary and historical authors in exploration of the liminal spaces between life and death, and the possible transitions between them. In Wüstenbuch one such text is included from the Papyrus Berlin 3024, known
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CONCEPTUAL MUSIC: NEW MEDIA AND FRONTIERS IN MARYANNE AMACHER’S CITY-LINKS SERIES Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Liam T. Dougherty
Between 1967 and 1988 Maryanne Amacher's City-Links series comprised radio broadcasts, sound installations and interdisciplinary performances featuring her practice of mixing sonic material from multiple remote locations joined via telecommunications infrastructure. These works reflect Amacher's compositional elevation of the process of sonic perception alongside musical material, an approach that
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WEAVING AN EXPANDED SONIC PRACTICE: PROPOSING A TEXTILIC SONIC METHOD Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-01 Callum G'Froerer
This article discusses the way textile metaphors can act as catalysts for reflection in my practice as a trumpet performer and composer. Metaphors such as ‘fibre’, ‘spin’, ‘yarn’, ‘ply’, ‘weave’, ‘loom’, ‘drape’ and ‘felt’ are engaged as lenses through which the dynamic, contingent and tailorable interactions are made between sonic and extra-sonic elements in my expanded practice. The metaphors are
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RELATIVE INTONATION: NON-SYMMETRICAL IMPLICATIONS OF LINEAR AND LOGARITHMIC INTERVALLIC MEASUREMENT Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-01 Ryan Pratt
This article investigates intervallic measurement and the tacit limitations engendered by a prevalent symmetrical perspective of measuring intervals. Various numerical and instrumental limitations and further detail of harmonic and melodic structures, such as Farey sequences, are illustrated. This approach distinguishes itself from a perspective of prime limits, explored by Harry Partch and others
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HYPERBOLIC SPACE AND VIOLETA DINESCU'S MUSICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE ‘WOMAN'S SOUL’ Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-01 Livia Teodorescu-Ciocanea
This paper proposes an approach to the representation of mental musical space, understood here as a mental ‘hologram’ of a musical structure created while composing or listening to a piece of music. Composers claim to ‘hear’ music in their mind and ‘see’ it in their spatial imagination; normally we see music graphically represented on two-dimensional staves, but we could mentally decode it in a three-
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DIAHEMITONIC MODALITY: A QUARTER-TONAL COMPOSITION SYSTEM Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-01 Simon Kaplan
This article describes a design process for a composition system based upon the quarter-tone scale. As the semitone and quarter-tone scales share the same properties, a musical grammar based upon the former is used as a model to construct an analogous musical grammar based upon the latter. Within the scope of diatonic modal music, the organisation of pitches and durations is analysed from a scientific
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PUTTING EGO ASIDE IN NEW OPERA: ON THE CO-CREATIVE DYNAMICS AROUND JE SUIS NARCISSISTE Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-01 Carles Vicent Pascual, José L. Besada
The world of opera is well known as a professional community in which egos often clash, yet the complexity of the operatic artwork is often heavily dependent on collaborative practice. This article discusses the co-creative dynamics that gave rise to the premiere production of the comic opera Je suis narcissiste, by composer Raquel García-Tomás, librettist Helena Tornero and stage director Marta Pazos
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THAT ‘OTHER’ WAY OF WORKING: MICHAEL WOLTERS AT 50 Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-01 Paul Norman
This article does not attempt to paint a complete picture of Michael Wolters (b.1971) as composer, teacher or researcher. Rather, it is a collection of comments and reflections drawn from a number of recent conversations with him. In these conversations we considered the work he has produced across his career, with a particular focus on his ideas about conceptual working, his outsider position and
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WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT HAVE WE DONE? Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Aaron Moorehouse
This article discusses responses to the survey-score Where are we Going? and What have we Done?, which sets out to explore how Anglophone composers choose to ground the impacts of their compositional practice. The composers’ responses primarily centred around the psychosocial impacts of composition, and the article unpicks some of the implications of this focus. The article then details the effect
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NARRATOLOGY IN THE PRACTICE SESSION MODEL OF ELLIOTT CARTER'S STRING QUARTET NO. 5 Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Christian Carey
Elliott Carter's programme notes for his String Quartet No. 5 describe it as being about the embodiment of human interaction within the rehearsal process. This article develops this concept, evaluating the musical figures that are foreshadowed by the fragments that Carter suggests are rehearsal outtakes. Certain motives are reiterated and developed through slight variations, thus exemplifying the rehearsal
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BETWEEN AUDIATION AND EKPHRASIS: PASCAL DUSAPIN'S ‘FALSE TRAILS’ Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Thomas Metcalf
This article investigates the prolific deployment of images in Pascal Dusapin's scores of the mid to late 1990s. Using Edwin Gordon's concept of ‘audiation’ and Siglind Bruhn's concept of ‘musical ekphrasis’, as well as Neal Curtis’ ideas on the agency and liveness of images, interdisciplinary interpretations of three Dusapin works are offered, using the score image as the main analytical starting
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STRIVING FOR THE UNDERNEATH: BODY AND PATHOS IN CHAYA CZERNOWIN'S COMPOSITION FOR VOICE IN INFINITE NOW AND HEART CHAMBER Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Sarit Shley-Zondiner
In her two recent operas, Heart Chamber (2017–19) and Infinite Now (2015–16), Chaya Czernowin uses vocal ensembles to embody a single character. In a 2016 article, she explained that she wanted to liberate the individual voice from its fixed emotional, social and individual conventions (especially its ingrained pathos), and to work with the voice as a free imaginative sonic material, using the ensemble
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VOICE WITHOUT SPEAKER: HUMAN SPEECH SYNTHESIS IN ACOUSTIC INSTRUMENTAL CONTEXTS Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Andrew Chen
This article provides an overview of compositional practices that invoke representations of the human voice by acoustic means, without the presence of actual human speakers, and, in identifying the limitations and deficiencies of extant practice, proposes a new method or methodological basis for achieving the same phenomenon, to different ends. Clarence Barlow's seminal synthrumentation method forms
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VALENTIN SILVESTROV AND PUTIN'S WAR IN UKRAINE Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-04-03 Richard Louis Gillies
This article draws on published interviews and personal correspondence with the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937) to situate the development of his musical aesthetics and international reputation within the context of the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, the Russian annexation of Crimea and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022. In particular, the article
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PERFORMING AUSTRALIAN ELECTROACOUSTIC WORKS FOR THE PAETZOLD CONTRABASS RECORDER Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-04-03 Alana Blackburn
A striking instrumental design innovation in recent years has been the development of the Paetzold ‘square bass’ bass recorders, sparking interest among performers and composers to develop a new approach to contemporary performance practice and electroacoustic composition. This article examines two works by Australian composers that have been performed by the author. Both pieces are written for the
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HEARING SOLARIS: DAI FUJIKURA'S OPERA AND A MUSICAL APPROACH TO STANISŁAW LEM'S NOVEL Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-04-03 Héloïse Demoz
Although many opera libretti are based on novels and short stories, only a few have used a science-fiction story as their main subject. The first opera of the Japanese composer Dai Fujikura was written in 2013–14 to a libretto by Saburo Teshigawara and is developed from Stanisław Lem's acclaimed novel Solaris (1961). By analysing passages from the score, this article will explore both the different
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PARALLELS AND DIVERGENCES: THREE CASE STUDIES IN THE MUSIC OF MICHAEL HERSCH Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-04-03 Christopher Fox
This article focuses on three recent works by the American composer Michael Hersch: the script of storms (2018), for soprano and orchestra, the chamber opera Poppaea (2019) and the 11-hour trilogy of works that have the overall title sew me into a shroud of leaves (2001–16). A discussion of aspects of these three scores will consider Hersch's deployment of a stylistically consistent musical language
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‘REACHING OUT’ OR INSTITUTIONAL VIRTUE-SIGNALLING? THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY OPERA PROJECTS IN UK OPERA HOUSES TODAY Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-04-03 Oliver Rudland
The education and outreach departments that coordinate community and participation projects have become a ubiquitous component of opera houses in the UK over the last 40 years yet rarely do their productions appear on the main stage. This article considers recent projects run by Opera North, English National Opera, Opera Holland Park and Glyndebourne and asks whether opera houses are genuinely committed
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EXTENDED TECHNIQUE AND POLYPHONIC WRITING IN LUCIANO BERIO'S SEQUENZA XIV Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-04-03 Silvio Ferraz, William Teixeira
This article discusses the use of extended techniques by Luciano Berio (1925–2003), focusing on his Sequenza XIV, for cello, finished in 2002. Our analysis attempts to demonstrate how Berio uses new ways of playing the instrument to create a kind of polyphony. The article references a large number of writings by Berio himself, including sketches, drafts and early manuscripts of Sequenza XIV, including
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‘TIME BLOWN UP HERE AND THERE’: FORM AND RHYTHM IN HANS ABRAHAMSEN'S LET ME TELL YOU EXPLORED Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-11 Sebastian Black
Hans Abrahamsen and Paul Griffith's let me tell you has been received with unusual adulation since its premiere in 2013. This article explores the work's place within the broader context of European literature, music and art, before shifting to a consideration of the piece's subtle hybrid form and its unique rhythmic structures. Abrahamsen's great interest in close (but not exact) symmetrical relationships
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THE DEMOCRATIC EXPERIENCE OF TIMBRE IN TYSHAWN SOREY'S AUTOSCHEDIASMS Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-11 Victoria Aschheim
Autoschediasms, the American composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey's conception of spontaneous composition, casts the participants as equals. The decision-making power is balanced between Sorey and the instrumentalists. Focusing on the 2020 performance of Autoschediasms by Sorey and the contemporary-music ensemble Alarm Will Sound, presented as part of the ensemble's Video Chat Variations
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NAUTILUS: A CASE STUDY IN HOW A DIGITAL SCORE CAN TRANSFORM CREATIVITY Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-11 Craig Vear, Carla Rees, Adam Stephenson
This article discusses Nautilus (2022), a composition for solo bass flute created using machine-learning techniques and a Unity game engine. We consider the approaches we adopted and how they enhanced creativity and musicianship for those involved. We reflect on Unity's potential as a novel and flexible driver for the creation of a musical score in which traditional elements of compositional design
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JUSTIN CONNOLLY IN INTERVIEW Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-11 Andrew Kurowski
In this transcription of an interview between the former Editor of New Music at BBC Radio 3 and the composer Justin Connolly, Connolly discusses his life as a composer. He traces his development from childhood to studies at the Royal College of Music and Yale University and the influence of the composer Roberto Gerhard. Connolly's Poems of Wallace Stevens IV, his most recent work at the time of the
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TWO HATS OR ONE: THE CO-DEPENDENT WORLDS OF JONATHAN HARVEY'S CHURCH AND CONCERT MUSIC Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-11 Ed Hughes
This article scrutinises the composer Jonathan Harvey's remark that ‘most of my colleagues see me as wearing two hats: one a church music composer's, the other an avant-garde instrumental/electronic composer's. I wish I could say it was one hat. I think of all my music as sacred in a sense.’ The article considers Harvey's church and concert works as linked worlds in order to propose a more holistic
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ROLE-PLAYING IN SIX TO FIVE Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-11 Thomas R. Moore
This article traces the creative process of six to five, a work for 20 guitarists with a special role for the conductor, premiered by the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp's guitar ensemble. The piece was commissioned by the author from the American composer Jessie Marino as part of research into the role of the instrumentalised conductor. The article explores the ways in which Marino deployed the conductor
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A SENSE OF THE IRREVERSIBLE: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE MUSIC OF ANN CLEARE Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Christian Carey
This article examines the music of composer Ann Cleare, focusing on representative works that display her use of microtonality, unconventional scoring, multimedia and extended techniques. It also discusses Cleare's connection to Irish language and poetry, environmentalism and visual art. Several chamber pieces are analysed. The article concludes with discussion of large-scale compositions, including
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FORMS OF MAKING: RICHARD EMSLEY'S FOR PIANO AND STILL/S Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Tim Rutherford-Johnson
This article considers the recent music of the British composer Richard Emsley. It takes as a framework Tim Ingold's reflections on the creation of knowledge, not as the study of fixed objects but as a study with them, expressed in his 2013 book Making. The article examines the forces of resistance and opportunity that have shaped Emsley's creation of an algorithmic compositional method, and its use
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MUSIC COMPOSITION AND EPISTEMIC INJUSTICE Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Lauren Redhead
This article considers the implications of the consideration of epistemic justice within modes of composition pedagogy in higher education and is in part a manifesto, in part a reflection on my experiences of teaching composition in this setting. I ask how composition education can become, as described in 2015 by the North Macedonian dramatist and creative educator Goran Stefanovski, ‘the politics
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FIVE SUGGESTIONS FOR AN ASPIRING COMPOSITION TEACHER: TOWARDS AN INCLUSIVE COMPOSITIONAL PEDAGOGY Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Patricia Alessandrini
This article takes a recent interview with Chaya Czernowin, ‘5 Things Harvard's Chaya Czernowin Suggests You Do as an Aspiring Composer’, as a point of departure for a series of reflections on compositional pedagogy focusing specifically on inclusion. It proposes a less restrictive definition of a ‘composer’ and a decentring of career expectations in favour of embracing a range of creative sound-making
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WHO ARE WE TEACHING AND WHY ARE WE TEACHING THEM? THOUGHTS ON MUSICAL DIVERSITY IN UNIVERSITY COMPOSITION TEACHING Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-09-29 John Godfrey
Musical composition has traditionally been taught with the assumption that students share musical backgrounds and have similar aims. In today's highly diverse musical world, however, composition students are exposed to a multiplicity of musical languages. They develop their personal creative styles from an internal conceptual ‘melting pot’ and must also develop compositional methodologies for a potentially
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REFLECTIONS ON TEACHING COMPOSITION FOR CONFIDENCE, EQUITY AND COMMUNITY Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Ian Power
The increasing precarity of arts academic jobs, combined with a much needed focus on equity and decolonisation, are de-privileging and destabilising the experimental music tradition and contemporary composer identity. As a result, composition departments are pursuing a paradox: scrambling to focus on specific marketable skills while also broadening the genres taught. After teaching in a composition
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TEACHING COMPOSITION IN A FLIPPED CLASSROOM Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Martin Iddon, Scott McLaughlin
In 2019 the present authors, along with our colleague Mic Spencer, began work on a project funded by the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence, designed to look at the ways in which we taught composition at the University of Leeds and how we might change them. Mic has focused on postgraduate teaching, and we have considered the earliest parts of the undergraduate curriculum, particularly the first
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LA BARBARA'S DOWNTOWN Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-07-04 Bernard Gendron
This article examines Joan La Barbara's role in New York's Downtown scene, where her career was nurtured. By ‘La Barbara's Downtown’ I mean her perspective on Downtown as reflected in where she performed, who she collaborated with and what she wrote. Beginning with her involvement in the Steve Reich and Philip Glass ensembles in the early 1970s, I follow her through explorations in improvisation with
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EIGHT LISTENING SKETCHES AND AN INTERVIEW WITH JOAN LA BARBARA Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-07-04 David Gutkin
Eight ‘listening sketches’ form the basis of an interview with experimental vocalist and composer Joan La Barbara. The conversation, a retrospective of La Barbara's compositions, is divided into four sections: Early experiments; Multi-track works; Words; New and recent works – pandemic times.
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JOAN LA BARBARA AND THE NEW WILDERNESS PRESERVATION BAND, 1973–74 Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-07-04 Kerry O'Brien
Joan La Barbara's involvement in the New Wilderness Preservation Band is an often cited but virtually unknown period of her history. And yet it may have been one of the most generative periods of her early career. Drawing upon archival documents, unreleased recordings and interviews, I narrate the history of the band, including La Barbara's early use of extended vocal techniques. I argue that her work
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NEXT TIME WON'T YOU SIGN WITH ME: JOAN LA BARBARA ON SESAME STREET Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-07-04 Andrea F. Bohlman
This article explores Joan La Barbara's appearance on Sesame Street with ‘The Signing Alphabet’ (1977) to engage her artistic commitments to accessibility and collaboration. The piece is an alphabet song rendered through vocal improvisation against an animation of the American Manual Alphabet by Steve Finkin. It plays with the relationships between sound, alphabets, learning and literacy, reaching
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JOAN LA BARBARA IN WEST BERLIN, 1979 Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-07-04 Joy H. Calico
This article explores Joan La Barbara's music-making in West Berlin in 1979 during her year as a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm (the Artists’ Programme of the German Academic Exchange Service). It maps significant locations and describes the creative work she did at each site, arguing for inclusion of her musicking in the sonic imaginary of Cold War Berlin. It also posits the role of the
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EKPHRASTIC VOICE: ON JOAN LA BARBARA'S SOUND PAINTINGS Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-07-04 Ryan Dohoney
A considerable portion of Joan La Barbara's compositional work has been concentrated in her ‘sound paintings’ – works that translate into sound the visual and energetic sensation La Barbara experiences when encountering art. Many of these works are ‘ekphrastic’ – that is, they render aurally a pre-existing work. In this article, I analyse three such sound paintings: Klee Alee (based on Paul Klee's
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MICHAEL BLAKE'S STRING QUARTETS AND THE IDEA OF AFRICAN ART MUSIC Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-04-04 Stephanus Muller
This article considers if and how the five string quartets of the South African composer Michael Blake, written between 2001 and 2014, could be considered as contributing to the compositional and discursive construct that is ‘African art music’. ‘African art music’ has often been evoked in connection with the compositional practices of West African composers especially but has received little consideration
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ATTENDING TO ATTENDING: PERFORMING AUDIENCE PERSONAE IN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-04-04 Charlie Sdraulig, Louis d'Heudières
This article proposes ways of reimagining how performers and audiences relate to one another during live performances. In contrast to forms of participation where audiences emulate well-known performer and/or composer models, the authors argue for sensitivity to audiences as they present themselves. Attending to, reciprocating and adopting audience behaviour in/as performance can lead to novel interactions
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‘LET'S PET MY LEFT HAND LIKE IT IS PISCO, YEAH?’ INTERPERSONAL TOUCH IN THE WORK OF ANDY INGAMELLS Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-04-04 Julian Kämper
This article discusses touch-related works by the British composer–performer Andy Ingamells, works that that make up a large part of his oeuvre. In particular the article focuses on a series of works created during the last decade: Tape Piece (2012), The Ticklish Subject (2013), Having never seen (a) Ghost (2014), Waschen (2015), He That Plays The English Gentlemen Shall Be Welcome (2016), Petting
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COLLABORATIVE COMPOSITION IN A HYPERLOCAL ENVIRONMENT Tempo (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-04-04 Bobbie-Jane Gardner
This article explores ways in which compositional methods can respond to and articulate the specificity of localness, interrogating ideas of place, identity, collaboration and the local through an examination of the methods used by professional Birmingham composers to open out aspects of their compositional approach to the wider community. I share my findings from for-Wards, an ambitious public music