A Composer's Imagining of Musical Tradition and the Reinvention of Heritage
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City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Yiu, R. (2013). A composer's imagining of musical tradition and the reinvention of heritage. (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, Guildhall School of Music and Drama) This is the accepted version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/18067/ Link to published version: Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. Reuse: Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ [email protected] A COMPOSER’S IMAGINING OF MUSICAL TRADITION AND THE REINVENTION OF HERITAGE RAYMOND YIU DMus in Composition Guildhall School of Music & Drama Composition Department September 2013 2 Table of Contents ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................. 7 1. MY MUSIC – A RETROSPECTIVE................................................................................ 8 1.1. IN THE BEGINNING ......................................................................................................... 8 1.2. TOWARDS A CREATIVE CRISIS ..................................................................................... 10 2. CONSIDERING TRADITIONS...................................................................................... 11 2.1. TRADITION AND IDENTITY ........................................................................................... 11 2.2. WHERE DO COMPOSERS BELONG? .............................................................................. 13 2.3. THE NOTION OF ROOTLESSNESS .................................................................................. 17 2.4. TRADITION AS A SYSTEM OF VALUES .......................................................................... 19 3. NAVIGATING THROUGH THE LABYRINTH OF MUSICAL TRADITIONS ..... 20 3.1. CONSTRUCTING AN IMAGINARY COUNTRY.................................................................. 20 3.2. THE GIANT WEB METAPHOR OF CULTURE .................................................................. 24 4. TRADITIONS IN THE GLOBAL AGE......................................................................... 25 4.1. THE ASIAN DILEMMA .................................................................................................. 25 4.2. IN SEARCH OF UNIVERSALISM ..................................................................................... 29 5. THE MEMORY OF ALL THAT .................................................................................... 32 6. WHERE DO I BELONG?................................................................................................ 34 7. THE COMPOSITIONS.................................................................................................... 36 7.1. NORTHWEST WIND (2010)............................................................................................. 37 7.2. DEAD LETTERS (2010) .................................................................................................. 45 7.3. JIESHI (2011)................................................................................................................ 51 7.4. OSLO – HOMMAGE À LUKAS FOSS (2011) ...................................................................... 59 7.5. LES ETOILES AU FRONT (2012)...................................................................................... 64 7.6. THE LONDON CITIZEN EXCEEDINGLY INJURED (2012)................................................... 69 8. CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................. 88 9. GLOSSARY....................................................................................................................... 91 10. BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................... 92 11. FURTHER READING................................................................................................... 98 12. DISCOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 102 13. SCORES AND CD........................................................................................................ 104 3 Illustrations Figure 1 Basic pentatonic mode modulation matrix – substituting tonics with leading notes........ 39 Figure 2 First part of Xintianyou. ..................................................................................................... 40 Figure 3 Northwest Wind, opening viola solo, bars 1-18. ................................................................ 41 Figure 4 Northwest Wind, bars 56-61, with C-mode active only. .................................................... 41 Figure 5 Northwest Wind, bars 97-100, with C, G D and A modes active....................................... 42 Figure 6 Northwest Wind, bars 190-201........................................................................................... 43 Figure 7 Dead Letters – Remembrance, bars 19-21. ........................................................................ 47 Figure 8 Piano introduction to Finzi’s Summer Schemes, from Earth and Air and Rain, Op.15. Copyright 1936 by Boosey & Co. Ltd. ............................................................................ 47 Figure 9 Dead Letters – Pastoral, bars 1-6. ..................................................................................... 48 Figure 10 Thomas Campion’s Your Faire Lookes Enflame My Desire, bars 1-6. ........................... 49 Figure 11 Dead Letters – Serenade, bars 1-8. .................................................................................. 49 Figure 12 Facsimile of transcription of Youlan by Master Li Xiangting.......................................... 53 Figure 13 Manuscript of Youlan, written during the early Tang Dynasty, circa seventh-century, found in Kyoto. (Japan National Museum, Ueno). .......................................................... 54 Figure 14 Spectrogram of SPEAR analysis of the first two distinctive notes of Youlan ................. 55 Figure 15 Youlan – Frequencies obtained from spectral analysis in relation to the original............ 56 Figure 16 Jieshi – four string players operating independently (rehearsal mark F). ........................ 57 Figure 17 Jieshi – four string players operating in synchronisation (before rehearsal mark N) ...... 57 Figure 18 Jieshi – example of string mimicking solo qin gesture (before rehearsal mark C).......... 58 Figure 19 Tone row used in Lukas Foss’ Solo (1981)...................................................................... 60 Figure 20 Oslo – Hommage à Lukas Foss, bars 1-13....................................................................... 61 Figure 21 Tone row used in Movement III Allegro Misterioso of Berg’s Lyrische Suite, compared to tone row in Foss’ Solo.................................................................................................. 62 Figure 22 ‘Lukas Foss’ in Morse code, Oslo – Hommage à Lukas Foss (bars 257-260)................. 63 Figure 23 Lukas Foss’ Solo tone row filtered by pentatonic C, G and D mode respectively........... 63 Figure 24 Opening of Satie’s Prélude du 1er Acte (La Vocation) from Le fils de étoiles (1891).... 66 Figure 25 Unnamed melody in Chapter 6 of Raymond Roussel’s Locus Solus............................... 67 Figure 26 The Red Sun is In Our Heart – handmade print by Beijing Language Institute student Li Jianping in 1967.. ............................................................................................................. 68 Figure 27 March of the Volunteers appears as waltz-type circus music in Movement VIII of Les Etoiles au Front, bars 44-48............................................................................................. 69 Figure 28 Insert found in an old Boosey & Hawkes edition of Elgar’s Cockaigne pocket score. ... 72 Figure 29 ‘Citizen’ theme from Edward Elgar’s Cockaigne (In London Town) Op. 40 (1901) ...... 73 Figure 30 ‘Inversion’ of Elgar’s ‘citizen’ theme – the ‘main cell’ formed by the first three notes is used as a basic building block for the work.. ................................................................... 73 Figure 31 ‘Retrograde’ of Elgar’s ‘citizen’ theme............................................................................ 74 Figure 32 Twelve-note melodic phrase built out of the four segments extracted from ‘retrograde’ of Elgar’s ‘citizen’ theme ..................................................................................................... 74 4 Figure 33 The twelve-note melodic idea proliferates itself in the woodwind, brass and percussion between rehearsal marks Q and R. ................................................................................... 75 Figure 34 Oranges and Lemons, as transcribed from chiming of the bells at