University of Huddersfield Repository Magas, Diego Sebastian Castro body, mimesis and image : a gesture based approach to interpretation in contemporary guitar performing practice Original Citation Magas, Diego Sebastian Castro (2016) body, mimesis and image : a gesture based approach to interpretation in contemporary guitar performing practice. Doctoral thesis, University of Huddersfield. This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/30238/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. Users may access full items free of charge; copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided: • The authors, title and full bibliographic details is credited in any copy; • A hyperlink and/or URL is included for the original metadata page; and • The content is not changed in any way. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/ BODY, MIMESIS AND IMAGE: A GESTURE-BASED APPROACH TO INTERPRETATION IN CONTEMPORARY GUITAR PERFORMING PRACTICE DIEGO SEBASTIÁN CASTRO MAGAS A thesis submitted to the University of Huddersfield in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Huddersfield August 2016 1 Copyright statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns any copyright in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Huddersfield the right to use such copyright for any administrative, promotional, educational and/or teaching purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts, may be made only in accordance with the regulations of the University Library. Details of these regulations may be obtained from the Librarian. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of any patents, designs, trademarks and any and all other intellectual property rights except for the Copyright (the “Intellectual Property Rights”) and any reproductions of copyright works, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property Rights and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property Rights and/or Reproductions. 2 Abstract This thesis addresses interpretative issues arising from notated music, particularly recent guitar music typifying progressive notational and aesthetic trends, from a perspective based on the concepts of mimesis and gesture. Drawing on Adorno’s theory of musical reproduction, scholarship on musical gesture and recent models of performers’ relationship to notation, I propose interpretative strategies aiming at the vindication of the role of the body in the discussion of musical works, while also examining the performing conventions challenged by recent developments in guitar notation. Artistic practice is fundamental to this thesis as it accounts for the exploration of various interpretative strategies and choices derived from the application of the aforementioned concepts. An accompanying folio of videos and recordings documents the impact of these theoretical concepts upon my performing practice. The starting point is a discussion of the performing issues of Brian Ferneyhough’s Kurze Schatten II, a peak of complexity in the guitar literature, and the relationship between musical gesture and the metaphorical domains to which this work alludes. Subsequently, the interpretative strategies proposed here are applied to aesthetic models differing from that of Ferneyhough as well as to music appealing to multi-parametric notation – here considered as a strand deriving from Ferneyhough’s aesthetics – requiring a paradigm shift in its interpretative approach. 3 Table of Contents Copyright statement ............................................................................................................................ 2 Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 3 List of Figures ............................................................................................................... 6 Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................... 10 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 11 0.1 Beginnings ......................................................................................................... 11 0.2 Objectives ......................................................................................................... 16 0.3 Methodology and chapter structure ................................................................. 17 Chapter 1: Body, mimesis, image and gesture: shaping interpretative strategies ...... 20 1.0 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 20 1.1 Name ................................................................................................................. 21 1.2 Mimesis ............................................................................................................. 26 1.3 Dialectical image ............................................................................................... 32 1.4 Gesture ............................................................................................................. 40 1.5 Performer as embodied mind, body as environment ....................................... 43 1.6 Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 48 Chapter 2: Brian Ferneyhough’s Kurze Schatten II: Benjamin’s thought-images and the mimetic dimension of performance through a gesture-based approach .............. 52 2.0 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 52 2.1 Thought-images ................................................................................................ 53 2.1.1 Benjamin’s Short Shadows ........................................................................ 53 2.1.2 Ferneyhough’s Kurze Schatten II ............................................................... 56 2.1.3 Manuscripts and sketches at the Paul Sacher Foundation ....................... 58 2.1.4 Benjamin’s texts ........................................................................................ 59 2.2 Kurze Schatten II: performing approaches ........................................................ 61 2.2.1 Movement I: melodies as epiphanies ....................................................... 61 2.2.2 Movement II: supporting gestures ............................................................ 67 2.2.3 Movement III: mental polyphony ............................................................. 72 2.2.4 Movement IV: a waltz ............................................................................... 75 2.2.5 Movement V: aura of harmonic entities ................................................... 80 4 2.2.6 Movement VI: (un)traceable harmonics ................................................... 83 2.2.7 Movement VII: Benjamin’s allegory .......................................................... 87 2.3 Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 92 Chapter 3: Performing mimesis ................................................................................... 94 3.0 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 94 3.1 Nuance and jump .............................................................................................. 96 3.1.1 James Dillon’s Shrouded Mirrors ............................................................... 97 3.1.2 Michael Finnissy’s Nasiye .......................................................................... 103 3.2 Repetition and representation .......................................................................... 109 3.2.1 Bryn Harrison’s M.C.E. .............................................................................. 109 3.2.2 Christopher Fox’s Chile ............................................................................. 113 3.3 Embodying distortion and perception .............................................................. 116 3.3.1 Matthew Sergeant’s bet maryam ............................................................. 116 3.3.2 Marc Codina’s Frame for [guitar] .............................................................. 122 3.4 Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 127 Chapter 4: A matter of pleats: gestural/muscular polyphony in Aaron Cassidy’s The Pleats of Matter for solo electric guitar ....................................................................... 129 4.0 Introduction .....................................................................................................