Output details

The Battle The Battle. 5.1 surround acousmatic work. Duration 14:24 Dedicated to my mother and her fighting spirit. This work began very traditionally, developing stereophonic materials towards something abstract in early January 2013. I took these developments to VICC (Visby International Centre for Composers) in April 2013 and developed them further still, deciding that the work would exist primarily in 5.1. Fate played its hand mid way through the residency and everything was brought back to my office in Sheffield where the work was completed in July 2013. During this time, I searched for a title for the work and completed further chapters of my course book, 'Sonic Art: Recipes and Reasonings'. The Battle is clearly a programmatic title. The abstract work is in two large sections filled with pulsed activity, accelerating gestures, granular textures, swift cut-aways, natural and forced spatialisation in 5.1 often with heavy reverberation. However, the way I now 'see' the work is as follows: The Battle conjures a number of battle 'scenes', often cloaked in darkness and mist (a well used acousmatic analogy). It comprises a number of clearly marked attacks, reinforced by skirmishes and feints, large-scale phalanx movements and close-quarter hand-to-hand combat. There are times when we feel we are on the offensive and times when we are on the run. We are placed in a medieval battlefield where, as the mist clears and spaces open out to reveal the aftermath of the battle, we feel the enormity of the fight. As we become more 'involved' in the action, so we feel increasingly drained by the uncertainty and battered by the inevitability of the battle. World premiere in October 2013 at Akousma, Montreal.

The Battle refines research in the use of the 5.1 medium. The piece exemplifies two innovations: first, it forefronts concepts of 'environment' and 'surround', which are taken to extremes in layered textures, and, second, the centre and Low Frequency Effects speakers are used boldly as 'support' and 'solo' carriers of musical information. The Battle also comprises an advance in the use of sound materials, which are more tactile and effervescent than in Moore’s previous pieces, yet retain an approachability achieved through careful control of pitch centre. This characteristic is distinctive to Moore’s work and a defining feature of many pieces in his submission to REF2. The aesthetic motivations for The Battle were to bring more visceral elements to bear in the soundworld, a technique drawn from the most recent works of Vaggione. Moore emulates Vaggione’s granular textures but draws these out to create sections of repetition and pulse which are articulated through strong gestural interjections. Exponential accelerating and decelerating archetypes draw together the thicker textures in the work. The programme notes provide a tangential route into the listening experience. The Battle received its world premiere at Akousma X in Montreal where Moore presented 50 minutes of his music in an evening event shared with François Bayle.