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Repetitions in Extended Time

Repetitions in Extended Time was commissioned by the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with funds from the Britten-Pears Foundation. It was premiered as the centrepiece of a portrait concert by ensemble Plus Minus in November 2008 at HCMF. A second performance took place at King's Place, London, April 2009, and the work was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in February 2009. The research underpinning this work concerns issues of musical temporality and, in particular, how our perception of the prolongation of a limited set of cyclical pitch materials might be perceived over a relatively large temporal span. Reduced materials are deployed in inverse proportion to an extended temporal canvas in a structure focussed on the compositional possibilities of high repetition with subtle variations. Each instrumental part is given its own structure of repetitions which, when combined with other individual parts, provides a latticed textural surface – an interlacing of loops and circles – that generates a sonic stream of continually phasing patterns. The work represents a significant breakthrough in my musical language in transforming my understanding of relations between slowing tempi, high repetition and extended temporal scale in manipulating effects of magnification of musical materials. This research is evaluated and contextualised in the book chapter ‘Repetitions in Extended Time: Recursive Structures and Musical Temporality’, in Harrison, B., Glover, R. (2013) Overcoming Form: reflections on immersive listening, Huddersfield University Press, as well as in the following peer reviewed articles: Harrison, B., ‘The Tempo of Enclosed Spaces: a short, personal reflection on the ensemble music of Aldo Clementi’, Contemporary Music Review, pp. 269-274, Volume 30 Parts 3-4, 2011 and Harrison, B., ‘Scanning the Peripheral Surface’, Divergence Press, Issue 1. 10.5920/divp.2013.15