PORTFOLIO OF ORIGINAL COMPOSITIONS: MUSIC OF POSSIBILITY Richard John Barrett Submitted in accordance with the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Music, PVAC September 2017 i The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2017 The University of Leeds and Richard John Barrett ii abstract The first half of this thesis begins from what for me are the four most significant innovations of twentieth century music: systematic composition methods, electronic and digital technology, free improvisation, and awareness of the historical, geographical and social dimensions of music. Possibilities for radicalising these areas are discussed, in the course of which several concepts central to my musical thinking, such as “radically idiomatic instrumentalism” and “seeded improvisation” are introduced. The second half focuses on the works submitted in the composition portfolio, both as practical explorations of the ideas discussed in the first half and as the environment in which those ideas originate and continue to evolve. These are world-line for electric lap steel guitar with trumpet, percussion and electronics, close-up for electroacoustic sextet, urlicht for percussion trio, eiszeiten for brass trio and electronics, and wake for three instrumental trios and electronics, all of which address from different directions the central issues of this research: the application to notated composition of concepts emerging from free improvisation, including highly systematic approaches, and an attempt to fuse the aforementioned innovations into a unified and coherent creative practice, in order to widen the way to future possibilities, and perhaps not only musical ones. iii iv PORTFOLIO OF ORIGINAL COMPOSITIONS: MUSIC OF POSSIBILITY table of contents acknowledgements vii 1.1 introduction 1 1.2 systematic composition 3 1.2.1 pitch-focus and pitch-vectors 8 1.2.2 rhythmic subdivision grids 11 1.2.3 durations and proportions 13 1.2.4 radically idiomatic instrumentalism 17 1.2.5 interconnections 18 1.3 technology 19 1.3.1 from low to high 20 1.3.2 four paradigms for electronic performance 20 1.3.3 composing an instrument 22 1.3.4 improvisation as idiomatic 25 1.4 improvisation 27 1.4.1 notation 34 1.4.2 seeded improvisation 36 1.5 awareness 43 1.5.1 geography 44 1.5.2 history 45 1.5.3 music of possibility 46 2.1 world-line 49 2.1.1 lens 53 2.1.2 rift 55 2.1.3 rasa 59 2.1.4 dust 61 2.1.5 knot 64 2.2 close-up 67 2.2.1 tendril 69 2.2.2 codex Ia 73 2.2.3 pauk 76 2.2.4 codex XIIa 78 2.2.5 nachtfalter 85 2.2.6 šuma 88 v 2.3 creation realities 99 2.3.1 codex XIII-XVII 101 2.3.2 urlicht 107 2.3.3 eiszeiten 113 2.3.4 wake 115 3.1 perspectives 125 3.2 conclusions 128 4 appendix: composition portfolio and supplementary materials 131 5 bibliography 133 vi acknowledgements This doctoral project was made possible by the award of the Stanley Burton Research Scholarship. I should especially like to thank my supervisors Dr Michael Spencer and Professor Martin Iddon for their essential guidance in getting this thesis into whatever shape it has. They may feel that their approach was light-handed, but I felt their benign but firm presence hovering over every paragraph. Thanks also to Paul Obermayer for reading and for many valuable suggestions (and for 31 years of musical partnership). Many others had a hand in shaping the ideas contained herein, not always consciously: Konrad Boehmer, Daryl Buckley, Marcel Cobussen, Arne Deforce, Mark Delaere, Bob Gilmore, Simon Howard, Sharon Kanach, George E. Lewis, Peter Neville, Ian Pace, John Palmer, Evan Parker, Carl Rosman, Kees Tazelaar and all my colleagues and students at the Institute of Sonology, Ute Wassermann, Christopher Williams, Tristram Williams; the musicians of ELISION, Ensemble Modelo62, Speak Percussion, Ensemble Studio6 and Trio Kobayashi for their performances of the works included in the portfolio, all the other musicians with whom I’ve had fruitful and inspiring collaborations over the years; and many of the pseudonymous members of several internet forums in which many challenging and thought-provoking discussions have taken place. My closest companion in every way through the whole writing process has been Milana Zarić. Her thoughts, music and love are entwined throughout the text and the music. I didn’t quite finish this thesis in time for Richard Toop, some small part of whose unique insight, wisdom and eloquence has I hope found its way into these words, which are dedicated to him, with deepest gratitude. i 1.1 introduction It is in the nature of the life and work of a creative musician that tracing the ultimate origin of an idea (or for that matter of a composition) is for all practical purposes impossible. One way of situating the original impetus to write this thesis, however, is to recall an invitation I received in March 2002 to give a presentation, as part of a series on “the future of music” held at the music department of the University of California, San Diego. My text was entitled “The Possibility of Music” (Barrett 2002a), but proposed the idea of a “music of possibility”, with the intention of characterising a music which might seem a small and insignificant phenomenon within the musical world as a whole, but which is actually in some transdimensional way “larger than the profit-friendly musics which seem to surround it, because of the breadth of its imaginative horizons, and the freedom we have, both as musicians and as listeners, to explore them. This is one of the few real freedoms available to us, after all.” And it might serve, in however small a role, as some kind of emancipatory model for other areas of life. At least, it has done as far as I am concerned. Expressing this idea has been a primary motivation for putting my thoughts in order in this thesis and in the musical compositions in the associated portfolio. Another (not unrelated) central motivating factor for many of the musical issues discussed in this thesis is a strongly felt imperative to identify those elements of the cultural environment which have yielded what seem to me to be the most fruitful and inspiring innovations in musical thinking, and to try to push them further, to grasp hold of tradition and to radicalise it, not as an end in itself, but as a means to make as articulate as possible a critical-creative response to personal, cultural, social and political circumstances, not just being open to a widening range of ideas and possibilities, but also being committed to deepening one’s approach by imagining and realising an integrated network of connections between them, however disparate they might seem. Part 1 of the present thesis, then, looks in turn at what for me are the four most consequential areas of innovation in twentieth-century musical thinking: 1.2 the development of systematic composition methods; 1.3 the growing use of electronic and digital technology; 1.4 the evolution of improvisation towards independence from preexistent stylistic/structural frameworks; 1.5 a widening awareness of the geographical, historical and political dimensions of music. Each of the following chapters of part 1 expands further on one of these innovations, from a brief outline of the ideas in question to a discussion of how I have attempted to apply, extend and integrate them in my own creative work. Part 2 then concentrates on a more detailed commentary on the compositions included in the portfolio, each of which embodies some or all of the main issues discussed in part 1 and, more importantly, how they are intertwined and interdependent. I would like to stress that the compositions are not intended as demonstrations of principles developed through the text, but that this text arises from the “artistic research” dimension of the compositions, that is to say from an attempt to organise and communicate whatever 1 knowledge and ideas concerning more general issues have emerged from these processes of musical creation. The works under discussion are: 2.1 world-line, a 30-minute composition for electric lap steel guitar solo with trumpet, percussion and electronics, written for ELISION; 2.2 close-up, a 66-minute composition for electroacoustic sextet (including myself) written for Ensemble Studio6; 2.3 three compositions grouped under the heading “creation realities”, comprising urlicht for percussion trio (written for Speak Percussion), eiszeiten for brass trio (premiered by Trio Kobayashi) and wake (written for Ensemble Modelo62). Following the commentaries, the brief part 3 of the thesis describes briefly how work on these compositions has contributed to the conception and realisation of music created since the portfolio was completed, and offers some perspectives on future possible evolutions of ideas discussed here. 2 1.2 systematic composition In the course of the nineteenth century, the harmonic/expressive resources of tonal music expanded to the point where it became possible, at least within certain strands of the western European tradition, to imagine and realise musics where the syntax of tonality would (or could) no longer provide structural coherence to guide either the composition process or the performer and listener. One of the most influential early creative responses to this situation was of