Output details

'the map has been barely marked', for women's voices (S, S, M-S, M-S) and stereo fixed electronics

'the map has been barely marked', for women's voices (S, S, M-S, M-S) and stereo fixed electronics. Commissioned and performed by Scottish Voices, Glasgow University Chapel, as part of the opening concert for the Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology 30 August-3 September 2011

(audio recording follow WEBLINK or CD_ROM and see attached SCORE as printout or as PDF on CD_ROM)

'the map has been barely marked' brings together a number of research imperatives and constraints, including:

• commissioning and setting a new text from Australian Nominee for the Nobel Prize for Literature, Gerald Murnane;

• combining womens’ voices with fixed electronics requiring no ‘click track’ and no input from myself in performance;

• making a electronic part using only SuperCollider software for synthesis and sequencing (relating to my other research, e.g. REF Output 1 Hall_Coll);

• Using “referential centricity” as a structural harmonic aspect of the composition (more infos see WEBLINK).

The majority of the text of the composition comes from Murnane (1988), and is supplemented by new text as mentioned above and detailed in the included programme note (WEBLINK/CD-ROM). The implied narrator’s purpose in these namings is elucidation and clarity, yet the names are also poetic. The approach to text setting has similar aims, in which names are sequenced and textured to bring out, for example, similarities and differences between name semantic meanings and phonetic content.

The fixed audio part was synthesised in SuperCollider software primarily using vowel modelling, comprising a drone which runs throughout the composition, and three electronic interludes, creating a clearly perceptible formal structure. The interludes are temporally isolated, allowing the conductor to adjust to discrepancies between the intended and actual tempo during the performance.

Murnane, G., 1988. Inland. Sydney: William Heinemann Australia.