Music

During the 1980s, the Darmstadt Summer Course for composition gave rise to a body of works engaged with the topic of complexity, often referred to under the label “New Complexity.” This complexity involves many aspects, the most observable of which comes from the notation. These scores, often replete with intricately woven rhythmic strands, abrupt dynamic changes, and spectacular shifts in pitch register present a plethora of technical and interpretational challenges for the performer and an equally daunting perceptive task for the listener.

Roger Redgate has suffered under this epithet more than others included in this group. The musicologist Richard Taruskin boldly claims that in their compositions “the notational detail was significant, even if the music was not; for its intricacy set a benchmark that is never likely to be equaled, let alone surpassed” (Taruskin 2009, 457-476). Yet in Roger Redgate’s  Genoi Hoios Essi, moments of complexly  weaving  rhythmic strands  give way  to perceptual transparency -an approach that is not the product of some eclectic notational strategy. Rather, the struggle between these two extremes lays at the heart of the narrative of Genoi, building an awareness of “things becoming themselves,” the translation of the title. Friedrich Nietzsche originally intended to use the title for the work now known as Ecce Homo. The rhetorical function of this title within the work is significant, for as well as asserting a struggle in the way various things attempt to “become” in Redgate’s music, Nietzsche’s ultimate rejection of the title suggests that such an attempt will never bear fruit.  Awareness of this aesthetic will inform an analysis of the perceptually salient moments in the work, and contrary to Taruskin, allow us to  move beyond a superficial examination of the notes-per-inch towards the overall process of “things becoming themselves.”

Over the past quarter century, commentators have lamented the lack of detailed discussion of Haydn's opus 50 string quartets. W. Dean Sutcliffe, in his monograph on the quartets, notes that opus 50, "finding itself in the middle of the oeuvre … has received a disproportionate amount of inattention." 1 More recently, in their 2006 volume, Floyd and Margaret Grave have suggested that the tendency to overlook op. 50 is understandable given "the works' absorption in structural and textural complexity, their unrelenting attention to motivic process, and certain peculiarities of their melodic idiom." 2 Indeed, the majority of commentators, finding themselves in the difficult position of balancing the larger picture of Haydn's work with the analysis of individual opuses (and consequently individual works and movements), have tended to provide only a brief evaluation of op. 50. 3 Furthermore, the first movement of op. 50 no. 3 has re-1 W. Dean Sutcliffe, Haydn: String Quartets, Op.50 (Cambridge:

, orchestration with Paul Edlin, and theory with Eva Mantzourani, during which time he received the Canterbury Festival Composition Award. In 2006, he received a Master's degree with distinction in composition from Goldsmiths College, University of London, under the guidance of Roger Redgate, before crossing the pond to study for his doctorate at Cornell University. At Cornell, Duncan has studied composition with Steven Stucky and Kevin Ernste and organ performance with Annette Richards. During his time at Cornell, Duncan's music has been performed by Cornell's Festival Chamber Orchestra, Wind Ensemble and Wind Symphony, the latter an educational outreach project for two simultaneous orchestras involving a children's band. In 2007 his Spiral Density Waves was performed at the North American Saxophone Alliance. The following year, the Johnson Art Museum hosted a non-staged performance of Duncan's chamber opera Abyssinia. Further afield, Duncan's works have been performed across the US, UK and continental Europe. He participated in the 2006 Deal Music Festival, where he was an invited composition tutor, working with students on joint projects, one of which was performed by the King's Singers. Mats and Johannes Möller have performed Duncan's works for flute and guitar across Europe, and his 501.567nm for 19-division trumpet, performed by Steve Altoft, is due for CD release in 2010. iv Dedicated to David Brewer (1937-2010) v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the members of my committee, Steven Stucky, Kevin Ernste and Annette Richards, for all their support and guidance over the past four years. In particular, I must thank Professor Stucky for giving me the opportunity to realize my dream to study in America, an experience that has shaped both my scholarly and compositional aspirations. I also wish to thank Keith Hjortshoj for the countless readings he made of the thesis and his aid in translating from British to American English… two countries indeed separated by a common language! Thanks must go to Bonna Boettcher, whose skills as a librarian and researcher made the path to the thesis that much smoother, obtaining countless scores, recordings and hard-to-find texts. Richard Toop's analytical insights were indispensible in developing the final chapter on Roger Redgate's Genoi Hoios Essi. Thanks must be extended too, to Roger, for his willingness to explore the "dreaded attic" for the sketches of Genoi and for his guidance in developing a critical stance on the composition process, which have no doubt left their mark on my own music.

Benjamin Britten's vocal music of 1943–1945 represents an apex in the composer's captivation with metric conflict. The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard (1943), the Holy Sonnets of John Donne (1945), and Peter Grimes (1945), diverse in their musical construction and distinct in the types of texts set, share a central compositional concern: the employment of sustained metric conflict as a means of emphasizing structural junctures or poetic ideas. Although this music has been the subject of form- and pitch-based analyses (Whittall, Stroeher, Rupprecht), it has yet to be examined from a metric perspective.
This paper explores how vocal entries problematize meter, generating local and hypermetric conflicts with the accompaniment for expressive and text-interpretative purposes: in Musgrave, metric conflict acts as a commentary on Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard's intention to fulfill their illicit affair; in the Holy Sonnets, metric conflict intensifies the relationship between the sonnet's protagonist (often considered as Donne himself) and the antagonists of sin, death, and an impending Day of Judgment; and, in Peter Grimes, the metric stability of the Borough's "Old Joe has Gone Fishin'" is disrupted as Grimes enters mid tune, reinforcing his alienation from the Borough. These analyses demonstrate the strength of a metric-based approach on a new body of musical works, not only providing fresh insights into Britten’s texted music, but also laying the foundation for further research into notated versus perceived meter in twentieth-century music.

Over the past quarter century, commentators have lamented the lack of detailed discussion of Haydn's opus 50 string quartets. W. Dean Sutcliffe, in his monograph on the quartets, notes that opus 50, "finding itself in the middle of the oeuvre … has received a disproportionate amount of inattention." 1 More recently, in their 2006 volume, Floyd and Margaret Grave have suggested that the tendency to overlook op. 50 is understandable given "the works' absorption in structural and textural complexity, their unrelenting attention to motivic process, and certain peculiarities of their melodic idiom." 2 Indeed, the majority of commentators, finding themselves in the difficult position of balancing the larger picture of Haydn's work with the analysis of individual opuses (and consequently individual works and movements), have tended to provide only a brief evaluation of op. 50. 3 Furthermore, the first movement of op. 50 no. 3 has re-1 W.

The songs of the Tamil saints are integral to ritual worship and musical and cultural practices in London's Tamil Hindu diaspora. Despite being written in the first millennium and detailing sites of  pilgrimage in South India and Sri Lanka, the songs remain essential in Tamil Hindu diasporic rituals and in attaining a sense of Tamil cultural and religious belonging in London. This article examines the conventionalized order of the songs in performance, or 'song paths', during the Maha Sivarathri festival in the London Sivan Temple in 2016 and how these song paths evoke sites of sacred geography in South Asia. I argue that the performance of song paths in diasporic settings constitutes a metaphorical pilgrimage, which simultaneously provides spatial, transnational and spiritual encounters through the intrinsic crossing facilitated by the songs' performance.

In this article, I explore the 'Songs of the Saints: Tamil Traditions and New Creativities' collaborative music project that took place in 2016 between London-based Carnatic, or South Indian classical, musicians, two composers specialising in Indian and European music, and music students at Goldsmiths, University of London. The collaboration used the Tamil devotional song repertoire as a point of musical departure. As a song tradition widely sung in worship and in classical concerts yet little known outside the Tamil Hindu community, the project was intended to shed light on a rich cultural practice in London, to exchange musical knowledge and to create socio-musical connections between the university and a local music scene. Another aim of the project was to work with local community-based professional musicians who wished to reach out to audiences beyond the diasporic scene. In this article, I look at the process of collaborative musical performance in two examples from the project by examining the creative decision-making that took place, including selecting repertoire, processes of improvisation, rehearsal and translation, and processes of “dialogical editing” and “dialogism-in-action”. The project reveals some of the nuances and tensions inherent in intercultural music collaboration and dialogue, a sphere that is often simplistically depicted as harmonious and egalitarian. As a result of working across musical borders, the project generated musical, social and cultural knowledge, particularly when different forms of implicit knowledge and embodied practices came into tension with others and when traditional musical roles, authorities and conventions were challenged. This article critically analyses this intercultural music collaboration and dialogical collaborative project in order to understand the value of such short-term ventures in higher education settings.

This article examines creative projects amongst second-generation, Tamil diasporic female musicians (focused on British Sri Lankan examples) located within London’s Carnatic music scene. Several scholars have suggested that the twentieth-century Indian nationalist project constructed ideals of femininity that positioned women to uphold the inner core of Indian culture as bearers of tradition during colonial rule (Bakrania 2013; Chatterjee 1989), and which were also reflected in the restricted performance and creativity of Carnatic music for female musicians (Subramanian 2006; Weidman 2003). This article focuses on second-generation musicians, who combine their Carnatic background and ‘South Indian’ sound with other everyday sounds in Britain. Their creative projects shift from an aesthetic that was responsive to colonialism in India to highlight female creativity and hybridity in decolonizing processes. This article presents examples of how cultural expectations of women as bearers of tradition are decentred, repositioning them as creative agents in a transnational diaspora.

This article explores the digital dissemination of Carnatic-South Indian classical-and Tamil devotional songs, singing and learning in London's Tamil diaspora. Carnatic and Tamil devotional singing are key cultural practices in this highly dispersed, or 'scattered', diaspora, and are strong markers of collective Tamil cultural identity. The voice embodies the distinct South Indian style and is, therefore, highly iconic in South India, Sri Lanka and their diasporas. To demonstrate how the voice and singing are experienced in multiple locations, the article describes specific examples of how 'traditional' vocal practices are disseminated through the Internet. These examples are Skype lessons and online broadcasting of Tamil devotional singing. Through engaging in traditional singing practices in online environments, it is argued that vocal practices are central to a sense of belonging in multiple diasporic localities and to musical, spiritual and cultural diasporic imaginaries.

This article examines creative projects amongst second-generation, British Tamil diasporic female musicians (focused on Sri Lankan examples) located within London's Carnatic music scene. Several scholars have suggested that the twentieth-century Indian nationalist project constructed ideals of femininity that positioned women as bearers of tradition during colonial rule to uphold the inner core of Indian culture [Bakrania 2013; Chatterjee 1989], and which were also reflected in the restricted performance and creativity of Carnatic music for female musicians [Subramanian 2006; Weidman 2003]. This article focuses on second-generation musicians, who combine their Carnatic background and 'South Indian' sound with other everyday sounds in Britain. Their creative projects shift from an aesthetic that was responsive to colonialism in India to highlight female creativity and hybridity in decolonising processes. This article presents examples of how cultural expectations of women as bearers of tradition are decentred, repositioning them as creative agents in a transnational diaspora.

The songs of the Tamil saints are integral to ritual worship and musical and cultural practices in London's Tamil Hindu diaspora. Despite being written in the first millennium and detailing sites of pilgrimage in South India and Sri Lanka, the songs remain integral in Tamil Hindu diasporic rituals and in attaining a sense of Tamil cultural and religious belonging in London. This article examines the conventionalized order of the songs in performance, or "song paths," during the Maha Sivarathri festival in the London Sivan Temple in 2016 and how these song paths evoke sites of sacred geography in South Asia. I argue that the performance of song paths in diasporic settings constitutes a metaphorical pilgrimage, which simultaneously provides spatial, transnational, and spiritual encounters through the intrinsic crossing facilitated by the songs' performance.

This report presents the research findings of an AHRC supported Northern Bridge Research Fellowship project mapping the relationships, policy and practice surrounding traditional music and the rural creative economy in Argyll, Scotland. The research uses fieldwork interviews and quantitative data to examine the traditional musical heritage of Argyll, Scotland, and how it is currently being mobilized as an economic and cultural asset in the region. It goes on to suggest possible recommendations to leverage the region's rich intangible cultural heritage for sustainable economic growth. The evidence reports from musicians, festival organisers, tour operators, business owners and other public sector stakeholders to better understand the role of traditional music in the economy of the region.

This paper examines the key issues that emerge in the understanding of traditional music as micro-enterprise in the rural creative economy of Argyll and Bute, Scotland. Using evidence from detailed ethnographic fieldwork, with musicians, festival organisers, tour operators, business owners and civil servants, this paper examines how issues such as geographical and social distance, internet connectivity, and cultural tourism are understood in relation to the musical life of Argyll and Bute. We advocate for greater ethnographic engagement with local communities in order to provide a more sophisticated, real-world understanding of rural cultural policy and the impact of current policies on local musicians. The paper therefore foregrounds ethnography as an important method in local, rural contexts such as Argyll and Bute, where typically, much of the creative economy is embedded in statistically invisible economic and cultural activity and portfolio employment.