Output details

Michael Finnissy, The History of Photography in Sound.

This 5-CD recording brings to fruition a long-term research project which I began in the late 1990s. The History of the Photography of Sound came about as a response to a six-concert series of Finnissy’s complete piano works I gave in London in 1996. I was heavily involved with the conception and composition of the work, being consulted by the composer on a regular basis and premiering four of the individual chapters (one of which, Seventeen Immortal Homosexual Poets, is dedicated to me) as well as the cycle as a whole. The work was premiered at the Royal Academy of Music, London, in January 2001. The recordings and the analytical work were undertaken over the following decade, leading to the publication of the collection in 2013. The analytical essay included in the boxed set is amplified in a 290-page monograph freely available from the Divine Arts and City University London websites. This is included here as supplementary material under paragraph 71c of the REF Part 2D criteria, in that it ‘include[s] complementary evidence about the processes and outcomes of the work’ and is offered to ‘[assist] panel members to access fully the research dimensions of the work’. Nevertheless, it is the recordings and accompanying booklet which comprise the submission for assessment purposes. My original research contribution therefore comprises: a contribution to the shape of the work itself through consultation with the composer on aspects of notation and technical viability; original insights into the representational and cross-cultural politics of Finnissy’s work, as argued in the textual commentary, arising from the detailed analysis of many boxes of extensive and obscure sketch materials; and an original (and unique) recorded interpretation of this extensive work, arising from many hours of individual practice, consultations with the composer and a significant number of recording and editing sessions.

The five CDs and extensive textual commentary on The History of Photography in Sound present original perspectives upon the representational and cross-cultural politics of Finnissy’s work. Overall this output involved the detailed analysis of extensive and obscure sketch materials and research into all the sources (folk music and otherwise) upon which they are based, without which few of the resulting arguments or interpretations would have been possible. The project involved many hours of individual practice, consultations with the composer, recording and editing sessions, in addition to extensive analysis and writing, commensurate with the scale of the exercise.