Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
University of Hertfordshire
Cartographies : [for saxophone quartet]
Originality: 'Cartographies' employs a new conceptual model in its rhythmic design. Instead of additive, metric or free rhythmic constructs, rhythmic structures often employ irregularity over a span of several bars combined with regularity through the repetition of this structure. Hence opening time signatures of: 6:8; 5:8; 4:8; 6:8; 5:8; 4:8 etc. Each bar in the three-bar structure reduces by a quaver (6 to 5 to 4), creating a perceptible intensification of rhythmic energy. This is the rhythmic equivalent of the interdiminishing chordal structures used in the piece 'A New Song.' Stylistically, 'Cartographies' takes further new steps, with post-minimalist cells and textures combined with faster event-change and greater harmonic direction and functionality than previous work in this genre. A redefinition of postminimalism.
Significance: 'Cartographies,' follows 'Sculptures,' a commission by the Mistral Saxophone Quartet for the first British Saxophone Congress in 1990. 'Sculptures' has become an international point of reference, having been performed by all the leading saxophone quartets in the world, with commercial recordings made by many of these groups. After a gap of some 24 years, 'Cartographies,' enhances considerably the thinking and practice critically explored in 'Sculptures,' in relation to the novel rhythmic and stylistic thinking outlined above.
Rigour: a key research question is: how can 'Cartographies' further evolve postminimalist music for saxophone quartet in the 21st century? An important part of the methodology in resolving this question has involved questionnaire responses from the performers and others interacting with this work. The purpose of this is to evaluate critically the research imperatives; in particular, the goal of a step-change from existing postminimalist quartets by composers such as Glass and Nyman. The work will achieve wide dissemination through the Spektral Classical record label with a cogent marketing strategy to maximise dissemination.
