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Bohortha : Seven Pieces for Orchestra

Bohortha was a commission from BBC Radio 3. The work was completed thanks to an AHRC Research Fellowship. As part of the Fellowship project I wrote a blog about the process of composition of the work (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio3/michael_zev_gordon/).

Its research content exists on three main levels:

1) time: my work focuses on how music can shape the listener’s perception of how time passes – the appearance of acceleration, slowing down, ceasing to pass and so on. The work juxtaposes different kinds of time, between and within movements. The final movement tests the possibilities of superimposing time-types, making particular use of the resources of orchestral textural layering. The work lies in the context of modernist tradition which re-evaluates time’s flow through music. But it also goes beyond modernism by a) mixing together the static and the teleological; and b) focusing on the possibilities of multi-layering.

2) fragmentation: this work involves the use of musical fragments – in part as a means to juxtapose different time-types; but also - especially in the second piece of the set which makes use of multiple quotation - to test the limits of musical coherence.

3) 21st-century tonality: this work is part of an ongoing development of notions and practice of ‘expanded tonal’ thought. The following non-exhaustive list comprises areas tested in the work:

i) ‘focality’ from melodic contour

ii) ‘focality’ from harmonic relations

iii) ‘focality’ from sonority

iv) functional harmonic substitutes

v) triads utilized in patterns without reference to common practice tonality

v) harmonic rhythm as contributing to or suppressing tonal focus vi) widely expanded spectrum of consonance to dissonance