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The tuning of keyboard and zither instruments is tempered, that is, the system of tuning their intervals pragmatically approximates that of just (or pure) intervallic tuning. This has certain advantages, but results in a rigid, cyclic, closed system of tuning (and by extension, harmony). By comparison, non-tempered tuning is an open system requiring a flexible approach to tuning each interval in turn. The resulting harmonies are sonorous and distinctive. Much music written using non-tempered tunings has an acute awareness of the phenomena arising from the interactions between the vibrations causing the sensation of sound, the physiology of our ears and the psychology of our hearing faculty. Without diminishing this awareness, my work also investigates the evocative potential of this approach to harmony, in part through visual analogies and tactile processes of sketching. Examples informing this investigation include Vija Celmins' drawings, Dan Graham's pavilion Double Exposure, the architectural concept terrain vague, the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, animated sound pioneers such as Arseni M. Avraamov, Percy Grainger's "free music machine" and the works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. My portfolio spans works for chamber orchestra to pieces for ensemble or soloist with pre-recorded sound and image. Through composing, I grappled with recurring questions concerning my evolving approach to non-tempered tuning-questions arising out of a meeting of theory, practice and imagination. These include the place of melody in my works, the place of traditional acoustic instruments (including those tuned in -or tuning to-equal temperament) and the relationship between perceptual phenomena and a personal evocative world. My study is indebted to-and extends-the work of composers like James Tenney, Ben Johnston and Marc Sabat. The title Vanishing Points poetically encapsulates different aspects of this exploration.

Leading up to this thesis, my music became increasingly concerned with the representation of specific works of static visual art (painting, photography, sculpture), with my focus having moved from using the chosen artwork as inspiration to using features of the artwork to inform my compositional decisions. My use of Western classical compositional techniques by which to produce a musical work that closely represents the chosen visual artwork became dissatisfying, leading me to seek new methods. The purpose of this thesis is to present these methods, often non-musical in nature, by which to write music that represents a specific static visual artwork. This is done with the intention of said musical works being ideally located in an art space environment (specifically an art gallery or museum), acting as the equivalent to a visual artwork or artefact. This thesis presents details of two installation projects in which I was involved as a contributor, producer, and curator, thus demonstrating the suitability of locating these works in an art space environment while also giving me practical experience of a field that I see my creativity moving towards. By wishing to locate my music in the art space environment, as opposed to a concert environment, I bring the intentions and effects of time into greater consideration, assessing its nature from both a musical and spatial/environmental standpoint. Stemming from Jonathan D. Kramer’s exploration of twentieth-century musical temporalities, in particular their identification of music in ‘vertical time’, I explore possibilities in determining a temporality most suited not only to music responding to static visual art but also to music that acts as an artwork in an art space environment.

Composers have adopted compositional systems in some way or another for many years, such processes involving various approaches. Most important to this project is twelve-tone serial technique, a compositional technique associated with the work of the Second Viennese School, but certainly not limited only to these composers. This project is largely inspired by the compositional techniques of Schoenberg as used in his mature serial output in addition to a range of other approaches adopted by other composers including Messiaen, Boulez, and Satie. The main goals of this project are to create a compositional system capable of removing almost all creative composer input from the process, and to find new methods of responding to visual imagery in an ultra-literal way. My strategy in this project was to study techniques used by other composers and to combine these with my own systematic compositional techniques in order to achieve these two main goals. In this project, I respond to the macrophotographic imagery of Richard Weston, in particular his investigation of rock and crystal microstructures. All images are taken from Weston’s private archives and are used, and reproduced, with permission. A trial-and-error approach was taken to the project whereby a work might be composed using a newly devised system or idea, after which a reflection was taken on the piece that resulted, and the system tweaked to eliminate any weaknesses and errors in the system-process in order to attempt to create the systems capable of producing the music I wanted to achieve. Throughout the project, sixteen compositions were completed of which twelve are submitted in the composition portfolio. Extracts of a further two are included as portfolio appendices. The project successfully resulted in new methods of composition in response to imagery, and in the creation of the all-encompassing system which eliminates the necessity for creative composer input. It has also produced systems which can be reapplied to new stimuli to create new and varied compositions.

The Use of Registral Spacing and Rhythmic Density as Musical Trajectories in a Portfolio of Original Compositionsis a doctoral research in composition that focuses on the construction of a musical trajectory of a composition by using the transmutation of its registral spacing and rhythmic density. The thesis consists of two parts: a portfolio of original compositions and an academic commentary. The portfolio comprises compositions for a vocalist with various mediums, small ensemble (up to six performers), solo instrument with electronics, small ensemble with electronics, and gestural devices with electronics. The academic commentary covers the initial ideas regarding expression and abstraction in arts and musicwhich laidthe foundation for the study of this research on the organisation of musical spaces in a composition to achieve an alternative musical trajectory that does not rely on the use of thematic/motivic development. It discusses the notion of non-linearity in some compositions from the portfolio which use the fragmentation of their texts and a sectional form based on the changes of the musical characteristics between sections as the musical trajectory; these approaches weremy first experiment that dissociatedfrom the convention of thematic/motivic development. The main part of the commentary focuses on how the changes of rhythmic density and registral spacing are used to create a musical trajectory; this section also includes how these musical aspects can be used to construct phrases and the structure of a composition. It later covers how working with electronics introducedme to the use of frequential and registral areas as part of a composition’s musical trajectory and how the experiences with electronics and instrumental composition influencedone another and, more importantly, my compositional process. It also discusses issues regarding notation and the search for the most suitable notation for each composition in the portfolio.

Recursion is a widespread term found in varied disciplines such as computer science, mathematics, linguistics, and psychology, among others. From the sociological point of view, recursion relates to the notion of self-organisation first introduced by Immanuel Kant and then revised into systems theory. In music, the term has been studied to describe the poiesis of musical structures that refer to themselves (self-similarity), from their basic elements up to complex shapes such as phrases or sections. On the other hand, for many researchers in cognition, creative acts occur beyond individuals. In the frame of contemporary music, creativity has not only been seen through the composer's prism but also through the active participation of performers in the artistic process. Indeed, researchers such as Clarke, Doffman, & Lim (2013), Fitch & Heyde (2007), and Gorton & Östersjö (2016) have analysed creative collaboration in composition and emphasised recursion as a property emerging from the core of ecological societies engaging composers and performers. Yet although many composers systematically carry out collaborative works in their creative process, only a few attempts at formalising multidimensional approaches on recursion have been developed so far. This thesis presents several attempts to develop two key concepts present in various dimensions of my compositional thinking: recursion, as an operative and interactive quality; and the idea of an 'extended compositional practice', understood as a coupling system in which I carry out effective reciprocities between my individual procedures and collaborative strategies. The portfolio I present in tandem with this commentary divides into two clusters of pieces representing two diverse perspectives on recursion in my processes: systemic and performative approaches. This proposal supplies novel views about ways that the musical composition can extend its traditional domains into systematic creative collaborations by adopting recursion as a catalyser of material and human interactions. I also provide thoughts about the role of improvisation and technologies, the nature of musical material, and introduce some initial stage to imagine possible interdisciplinary applications.

Bands as social and cultural forces primarily release albums and go on tour. These well established, popular forms for recording, presenting and performing music seem somewhat antiquated, similar now to how bands acted fifty years ago. This means that bands are not necessarily able to properly embrace new musical potentials that open up as technology evolves. The goal of this study is to establish how new forms of expression and alternative modes of composition can be utilised by bands and solo artists working in the commercial popular music industry. It aims to do this through a practice-based exploration that specifically embraces unique or unconventional approaches to composition in the context of popular music. The algorithmic and interactive strategies for music making that are focussed on in this study have been well covered in the academic literature, as have critical histories surrounding the evolution of popular music over the last century, up to and including its current moment. However, so far nobody has explored how emerging technologies might be applied to popular music forms from the perspective of an active participant working at a professional level in the music industry. This is what makes this study unique and significant. To answer these questions, this study describes a new methodology. Decomposition Theory is a critically aware approach to music-making that sees composition as a dialectical process based around constructing musical and audio-visual systems that have the ability to generate endless musical potentialities. Established forms for popular music, such as songs, albums or live performances, can then be 'decomposed' from these systems. This is demonstrated through a collection of practice-based research at differing scales, from custom algorithmic functions generating individual phrases and rhythms at the micro scale, to large, audio-visual live performances, infinitely-long generative video game soundtracks, and new means of disseminating musical and audio-visual projects digitally at the macro scale. A theoretical grounding for the methodology is included in this accompanying written commentary. This study finds that by bands putting Decomposition Theory into practice - that is by developing a new critical awareness to their own working practice, and viewing composition as a dialectical process rather than measuring it through completed musical productions - they need not be tied to established popular musical forms, but can discover new modes of reflection, composition, and alternative means for disseminating their work.

The objective of my portfolio is to develop a new compositional process that involves analysing recorded sounds, interpreting and translating analyses into musical metaphors, and generating formal structures based on changes in timbre. The portfolio explores several models of compositional processes that were created in the course of my research. It analyses the strengths and weaknesses of these models, and it offers insight into the ways that the compositional process may be further developed.

The present thesis commentary begins with a conception of the melodic derived from Christian Wolff—of music’s existence as tied to succession and on-following. With this as a basis, the thesis explores a portfolio of compositions from three differing temporal standpoints. First, in a condition of afterness, examining the roles of digestion, embodiment, and homage in the compositional process. Second, in the condition of the ‘long present’, exploring the present-tense conditions of mood, melancholia, mourning, and their relation to melodic unfolding. Third, exploring the condition of ‘anticipatory consciousness’, examining the immanent tensions and futurity of monophony, drawing on theories of self-similarity, and the accretion of melodic identifiability and itselfness. Alongside melodic aspects, the commentary examines the roles of Just Intonation in the portfolio music. The commentary adopts a synoptic approach, drawing from a wide range of musical and textual sources, including Christian Wolff, Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, Charlotte ‘Claribel’ Barnard, Conlon Nancarrow, Ornette Coleman, Josef Albers, Anni Albers, Robert Burton, Jorge Luis Borges, Heinz Bude, Carlo Rovelli and others. Alongside contemporary music theory and aesthetics, reference is made to theories of embodied cognition, histories of experimentalism, the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College, studies of the microbiome, the history of emotion, medieval music theory, theories of temporal succession, history of early-modern melancholia, and other subjects.

A portfolio of compositions and accompanying commentary in which I explore the use of melody, harmony, and tonality within a (post-)acousmatic context. Consideration is also given to ideas of narrative, simplicity, and post-digital and glitch processing. The pieces within the portfolio are divided thematically, falling into three broad categories that function as case studies and further examine the ideas given above. The first category is of two pieces based on folk music, and explores the use of leitmotif and programmatic structure within an acousmatic context. The second category of three pieces are also based around repurposed melodic material, though derived from original compositions rather than folk song. Within these pieces, I move away from a strictly programmatic approach, but still use narrative ideas to structure the works. I also present a concept of 'framing' - examining the listener point-of-view presented by the music - and use these pieces as a case study to explore this further. The third category consists of pieces which build on ideas of simplicity in structure, with a greater exploration of drone material. These pieces also deal with incorporating some manner of external material, for example works of visual art or material by other composers.

This thesis discusses my exploration of a musical language in which the performer's and audience's subjectivity plays a key part in the formation of a composition's core meaning. Following an introductory chapter elaborating on a constellation of concepts surrounding the Japanese aesthetics of ma, the chapters correspond to three phases of research. The first phase considers strategized ideas of silence, the relations of determinacy-indeterminacy, and spatio-temporal architecture examined in the Lizard series within a framework informed by the ma concept. In the second phase with the Skin, Gelatine, Soot cycle, I use paradoxical states, such as sounds-silence and elements of indeterminacy to extend concepts of an architecture of presence and absence into a more complex polyphony of lines. This chapter also describes how the theatricalization of the performer's body and their vocalisation are used to challenge linear thought. In the final chapter with One Arm series, I discuss ventriloquism effects between the performer and their performance as a means to bring an interplay of paradoxical sensibility onto the stage. Shifting performative modes between a kind of first and third-person stance result in a slippage or interstice in which the performer might 'communicate' with him or herself. In conclusion, I summarize my quest for certain qualities of aesthetic experience and where this might lead me musically and aesthetically in addition to giving a perspective on how my viewpoints on 'culture' and 'identity' have been established and transformed.

My recent compositional work consists of installed sound environments and pieces for performance by ensembles, soloists, and machines. Throughout my research period I have proposed musical and sonic art works as fields of and for phenomenological inquiry and reflection. From this perspective, my pieces become sites for enacting environmental encounters that unfold around listeners. These circumstances problematize the certainty of subject and object within aural and aesthetic experiences of sound situations. This commentary surveys material and thought processes in my recent compositional work and accompanies a portfolio of works from my research period to comprise my submission for partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. In the opening of this text to follow I review and contextualize key technical areas within my material and compositional processes of my portfolio work. Three main areas of research and their outcomes within specific pieces are considered in Chapter 1. First, a permutational and parametric technique for composing patterned musical material is discussed. Following this, I examine and contextualize sculptural approaches to temporality in recent works. Finally, I consider applications of indeterminacy at several structural levels within my recent pieces. In Chapter 2, I discuss the conceptual development of my research and portfolio work, locating my own strands of inquiry and contributions to thought and practice within contemporary and historical practices in music and the sonic arts. I consider key sources of inspiration from visual art, perceptual psychology, and philosophy. Developing this, I demonstrate how phenomenological activity underlies, has developed within, or assists in my reflection upon the outcomes of my compositional and experimental strategies. Chapter 3 offers further commentary on each piece within my portfolio submission. I then conclude with Chapter 4 by proposing further developments for my research and future compositional projects.

This thesis focuses upon how the use of aleatoricism can be used in electro-acoustic music to increase the perceived connection between the electronic and acoustic forces in performance. It also considers how the tools that a composer uses to create their work can enforce an influence upon their own creative process. These issues stem from research conducted early in the project investigating mapping strategies applied to composition for physical gesture capture devices. The thesis progresses by exploring performer freedom for both electronic and acoustic performers which includes examination of the use of different methods of scoring in order to transmit the composer's ideas. The approach is then considered in isolation from electronics with purely acoustic ensembles before exploring the use of recording as a compositional technique alongside indeterminate performance. All of these issues are explored within the context of my own practice, while simultaneously highlighting my overall compositional approach and how it is informed by this research. The thesis consists of two volumes. The first presents a portfolio of compositions that explore varying approaches to composition for various ensembles. The second volume consists of a written commentary that explores the context, themes and motivations for the compositions in the first.

Over the last decade, the interest in including interdisciplinary practices within the context of contemporary music has increased. Research into this field needs to continue being addressed by composers, as well as by musicologists and art historians, in order to develop case studies which assess and define the multiple creative approaches that a project involving many artistic disciplines can have. The present research evaluates the substantial changes that have occurred in my composition practice as a consequence of using an interdisciplinary methodology -based on the transferral of methods from one discipline to another- and reflects on how an adaptive strategy, which reconsiders the preconceived compositional procedures, leads composers working within an interdisciplinary context to an integrated outcome. Given that this study has mainly been practice-based, the present commentary focuses on the composition of the following eight works: [co][hes][ion] (2013), for dance and pre-recorded electronics; Wondjina (2013), for bass clarinet, live electronics, video and dance; stone:speeches (2014), an audiovisual installation; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2014), for piano, pre-recorded electronics and video-animation; disPLACE (a nowhere opera) - Història d'una casa (2015) (libretto by Helena Tornero), a chamber opera; [logolepsy/lethologica] (2016), an acousmatic work inspired by old radiophonic works; liquid:speeches (2016), a multichannel audiovisual installation; and Blind Contours no. 1 (2016), for ensemble, pre-recorded electronics and video.

This doctoral portfolio and commentary thesis constitute a practice-led research into 'immersive' musical experiences, both from the perspective of the spectator and the composer. Specific parallels are drawn between immersive experiences, the concept of 'mise-en-abyme' (placing copies of an image within the same image, or placing a story within a story) and how this concept can be developed as a process for creating musical materials. Interdisciplinary art forms, collaborative methods and the novel approaches to using multimedia tools are explored for their potential in creating conditions for engaged listening and composition techniques. After an introduction to the 'mise-en-abyme' concept in Chapter One, the main body of the commentary thesis is divided into three main sections (Chapters Two, Three and Four). The first part (Chapter Two) explores specific musical devices that draw on installation art forms to provoke heightened experience of musical works. The second part (Chapter Three) explores two major collaborative projects, investigating detailed working methods, the role of the composer-performer and the evolving role of authorship in modern music making. The third part (Chapter Four) explores new methods of composing with digital media, that draw on the 'mise-en-abyme' concept as a process for generating new materials and musical structures. This is accompanied by a portfolio of eleven original works for acoustic instruments and electroacoustic media. Scores, audio and video recordings, digital performance materials (Max patches and Ableton Live sessions) and an appendix of supplementary materials are included in print form and on an accompanying USB flash drive.

The following commentary details ways in which I have enriched my own compositional language by exploring the integration of elements from Chinese musical culture within the context of Western Contemporary music. This commentary accompanies a portfolio of compositions and sets out to articulate the means by which I have attempted to develop and to enrich my personal musical language through the integration of certain, in my view, key elements from Chinese musical culture within the context of Western contemporary musical thought. My focus is on three elements which are shared between both Chinese and Western cultures, used in each with very different effect and intent: glissandi, modality and micro-tonality. The commentary explores the role each of these plays in my own work, how their practice and use derive from Chinese musical traditions and how I have set out to re-think that practice in terms of a musical language derived from a contemporary 'Western' art-music context.

Even now, some twenty-five years after the publication of Lydia Goehr’s The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works (1992), musicologists still have issues talking about composers’ activities in terms of ‘works’. Central to Goehr’s thesis was her assertion that J.S. Bach ‘did not compose works.’ However, a significant number of texts by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Lutheran German musicians and theorists explicitly depict composition as an act of working. For example, in Bach’s defence against the criticisms of Johann Adolph Scheibe, the Leipzig rhetorician Johann Abraham Birnbaum described how ‘the more industriously and painstakingly [the composer] works at the improvement of Nature — the more brilliantly shines the beauty thus brought into being.’ And the reception of Bach’s music in our own time is still inextricably bound up with the notion of work. This has never been more evident than in this year, 2017, which marks the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Lutheran Reformation. There is a clear sense — both in eighteenth- century texts and in contemporary discourse — that the more difficulty involved in the process of a piece’s composition, the greater value it acquires. However, considerations of the act of composition as a labour process and the ethical implications of this have largely been absent in the discourse surrounding the musical work-concept. Taking into account the underlying cultural and theological tenets of Lutheranism, this dissertation seeks to explore why an emphasis on working was so pervasive in early modern German music, and how this was manifested in aesthetic terms. By assessing composers’ correspondences, theoretical writings, writings by both proponents of the contrapuntal aesthetic and its opponents, it seeks to better understand how thinking of the act of composition in terms of process aligns with our understanding of the work as a product — and ultimately examines what thinking about music in this way might tell us about some of our core contemporary musical and cultural values.

This portfolio consists of seven compositions accompanied by a written commentary and recordings/mock ups of the works. The compositions span a wide variety of instrumentations ranging from solo works to vocal, choral, chamber and orchestral works. The commentary provides some background to the works' conception and places them in the larger context of postmodern composition. A brief history of postmodern music is outlined and the reasons for locating my work in this area are explored. Special emphasis is placed on 'the past' as a musical preoccupation, a focus which manifests itself in various ways in all the works included. In some cases, the past acts simply as an inspiration; no attempt is made to reference it in any concrete musical way. In other works, the past is invoked using musical quotation, pastiche, or templates. A multitude of ways in which past music might appear in the present, techniques which allow such importations to achieve a number of different effects, and how these manifest themselves in my works, are all explored. Analogous compositional approaches in the music of Berio (restoration/repair), Schnittke (quotation), Holloway (composing 'upon another work'), Goehr (modeling), Chadburn (text setting) and Adès (defamiliarization) are also explored.

A variety of work has been carried out investigating the suitability of interactive genetic algorithms (IGAs) for musical composition. There have been some promising results demonstrating that it is, in principle, an effective approach. Modern sound synthesis and processing techniques (SSPTs) are often very complex and difficult to use. They often consist of tens or hundreds of parameters and a large range of values can be assigned to each parameter. This results in an immense number of parameter combinations; listening to the result of each one is clearly not viable. Furthermore, the effect each parameter has on the audio output may not be immediately obvious. Effectively using these systems can require a considerable time commitment and a great deal of theoretical knowledge. This means that in many cases these techniques are not being used to their full potential. IGAs offer a solution to this problem by providing a user with a simpler, more accessible interface to a range of SSPTs. This allows the user to navigate more effectively through the parameter space and explore the range of materials which can be generated by an SSPT. This thesis presents compositions and software that investigate a range of approaches to the application of IGAs to sound design, composition and performance. While investigating these areas, the aim has been to overcome the limitations of previous IGA based systems and extend this approach into new areas. A number of IGA based systems have been developed which allow a user to develop varied compositions consisting of diverse and complex material with minimal training.

The current submitted work consists of a portfolio of musical works, visual pieces and thoughts that preoccupied me over a period of research and creation from late 2014 to 2017. Pieces described in this thesis developed into an overall artistic research and craft which led to a specific workflow serving a new personal aesthetic. Two parts describe two seemingly antonymous automatic creation processes: automatic versus automatic. The first part describes my inspirations together with a consequent formal-ization of my composition techniques. I render generative automatic music both emerging from finite state computation and infinitesimal interference. The second part shows that I often perform my music in specific sites with challenging conditions. I consider them as constraints that eventually also be-come part of the composition system. The materialization of a piece involves aback-and-forth process, between concepts and realities, that I finally transcend in the sense of surrealist automatism. This mechanical and human process is a necessity for the authenticity to my pieces.

This text is a commentary on my preoccupations over the course of my doctoral research from 2013 to 2017. It accompanies a portfolio of works realized and submitted as part of this doctoral thesis, which looks more specifically at feedback as an iterative process between myself as instrument-builder, composer and performer. This approach, which puts sound center stage as the primary material, emphasizes the organic and bidirectional internal influences among these three creative poles. This thesis is devoted to the main subject of my doctoral research: the notion of creative feedback among instrument-builder, composer and performer. It is in five parts: 1. A definition of my principal influences and aesthetic biases; 2. A portrait outlining the connections of influence among the instrument-builder, composer and performer; 3. A discussion of relationships outside the creative process itself, that is to say the influence of other artists (composers, musicians, other instruments) in my approach to research creation; 4. A demonstration of how I use the influences of other composers, other musicians and even other artists whose works speak to and inspire me; and 5. A presentation of three concrete examples from the portfolio realized during my doctoral research The body of work submitted includes: three new instruments, two sound installations,four compositions and three comprovisations.

This commentary accompanies a portfolio of compositions created between 2014 and 2018, and describes two methods of transformative mimicry: transcription (used in the notated compositions) and automatic singing (non-notated embodied research). Transformative mimicry refers to an act of imitating, translating, or tracing that is both transformative and generative. In the first method, transcription, recordings of live musical performances are used as borrowed source material, and the notate-able details of their vocality are translated (i.e., transformed through imprecise imitation) through the technology of notation. The second method, automatic singing, involves variations of vocalising-while-listening-whilemeditating (i.e., imprecise vocal mimicry), in an iterative process that generates a resonance between melodic sound and interoceptive experience. This commentary is organised around a close analysis of three sets of work. In the first set of compositions, referred to collectively as Research Phase 1, my role is that of a composer behind a desk. The making of the next set of work, in Research Phase 2, involves myself as an untrained singer on stage, or myself as an uncomposerly director creating music together with a performer-collaborator. I combine these two areas of practice in a short Research Phase 3, which opens the door to future explorations. This commentary details not only my own practice as a composer but also its associated technique and knowledge, with the aim of addressing the following Guiding Questions: What knowledge structures my practice of notating? When notating is cast aside, which areas of technique replace it? How can one describe the knowledge that structures my non-notated or post-notated compositional practice? On this methodological foundation, I provide a detailed commentary on the processes involved in the making of each piece. I then compare and contrast the making-processes through an exploration of three musical tools common to each piece: the relationship between melody and repetition; the distillation of musical material and meditative focussing-in; and types of unison and togetherness (accord and attunement). The dissertation concludes by reflecting on the Guiding Questions, and by proposing areas for future development.

This thesis considers the pervasive and multifaceted influence of Richard Wagner’s music, aesthetics, and politics on British composers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on music analysis, hermeneutics, and various archival sources (composers’ writings, contemporary reviews, and unpublished music), each chapter of the thesis focusses on case studies that bring British musical Wagnerism into dialogue with a number of other prominent artistic and cultural currents during the period under consideration: notably, Celticism, Pre-Raphaelitism, Arthurianism, nationalisms, mysticism, pantheism, eroticism, and ideas relating to the integration of or translatability of the arts. Despite the sometimes widely divergent aesthetic, political, and social ends for which these composers called on Wagnerian ideas and techniques, this thesis argues that all these manifestations of Wagnerism were united by their composers’ desire to regenerate or re-enchant a world that was perceived to be in a state of crisis or decay. Ultimately, by viewing these composers and works through the lens of British Wagnerism, this study enriches our understanding of British music of the period and situates it the context of a wider European phenomenon.

This commentary consists of an attempt to discuss the problems raised by the way I approach composition and sound in general. My argument is based on the definition I give of the key concepts of space, sound image and evocation, mainly through the means of an aesthetic reflection that tries to stay faithful to the basic rules of phenomenological method. In this context, space is not meant in its locative sense, rather it is defined as the process of exploration of the sound image that characterizes the act of listening. The sound image is thence discussed in its spatial aspects. It is described as an object defined by a frame (both conceptual and empirical) and an inside, which is explored by the listener. It is this exploration that allows the listener to reach a moment of resonance with the sound image itself, moment that I defined as evocation. The consideration of the sound image in a spatial sense allows me to introduce the idea of meta-space, a term that aims at describing the way in which the sound images enter into a mutual relationship in the context of a musical composition.

This composition portfolio contains seven pieces which explore different ways to create strategies for composing and performing with instrumentalists when digital technology is involved. Through these works, I aim to create musical dialogues exploring the following broad relationships: composer-performer, performer-improviser, pre-recorded and live sound, and open and fixed forms. These relationships are regarded as continua, rather than binary opposites – I aim to compose with the musical dialogues that emerge from them. Working with these relationships has led to an approach which is largely a synthesis of processes borrowed from experimental practice found in jazz, improvisation, classical, and electronic music production techniques. The dialogues found in the works rely mainly on a solo instrumentalist providing sound as a source material, either performed live or pre-sampled. Two of the pieces rely on pre-recorded instrumental sound and require no live instrumentalist in their presentation; the rest are for laptop and another instrumentalist. Part of my submission refers to soundfiles, and performance materials. The Max patches submitted are personal improvisation tools. My performances with those tools have been guided by the scores submitted.

The thesis explores through composition the processes of listening, remembering, storing, and recalling music and the ephemeral nature of these same actions, recognising that musical experiences can never truly be preserved. To explore preservation and entropy in memory and music, the portfolio of works is guided by three research areas: multi-level systemisation in compositional methods; reflection on the experience of music itself; and integration of acoustic and electronic techniques. The research concepts draw from the fields of ecological psychoacoustics, music cognition, memory studies, history of music technology, and philosophy and aesthetics. The thesis consists of three volumes with accompanying supplemental materials. The first two volumes present a portfolio of original compositions, comprising sixteen works ranging from three to twenty minutes and from soloist to large string ensemble, including six electroacoustic pieces, with a combined duration of circa 100 minutes. Appendix One contains one piece, Artefacts for symphony orchestra, the composition of which provided the foundation for this project. The third volume is a commentary on the portfolio (c. 27,000 words), providing context for the works and their compositional processes in terms of conceptual and theoretical bases, academic context, musical techniques and analysis, employment of electronic technology, the influence of other composers and artists, and placement of my work within the field of composition. The commentary is divided into five parts. Part One covers research concepts and context; Part Two examines structural use of systemisation and collage; Part Three outlines approaches to harmony; Part Four describes the use of electronics in the portfolio, connecting these techniques to the research concepts; Part Five presents a detailed description and analysis of three pieces that illustrate a synthesis of the methods explored over the course of composing the portfolio. The supplementary materials include recordings of the works and Max/MSP patches accompanying the electroacoustic works.

The topic of this dissertation is the complex and varied relationship between words and music. Through the transference of the sonic and semantic properties and narrative capabilities of language to my music, I have discovered numerous ways of relating the meaning of the music to its design. This has resulted in a portfolio of pieces that incorporates text into vocal music, music with narration, and instrumental music. Chapter 1 functions in two ways. The first main subchapter sets out a theoretical framework for my research field by showing how the similarities and differences between language and music can illuminate exploitable tensions. These ideas draw on the work of Charles Ives, Virginia Woolf, Klaas de Vries, and Morton Feldman. The second subchapter explains the relevance of different textual elements and their eventual outcomes in my music. Chapter 2 provides commentary on eight pieces: Running at Still Life, Falling Up, as though birds, Sleep & Unremembrance, The Mysteries of Jacob, Three Pieces for Guitar (To the Sea in a Sieve), Beautiful School, and Three Biographies. A description and analysis of each piece relates the musical material and compositional process to the overall topic of words and music. Finally, Chapter 3 draws conclusions based on the eight pieces and discusses possible methods of reclassifying the text/music relationship in light of these musical outcomes.

I start from the principle that composition is a historical lineage of techniques that have traditionally been applied to music but need not be. To illustrate this, I apply composition principles to the writing of this PhD thesis. In describing this process, I draw parallels between the music work I have composed during 2013-2017 and the process of thesis writing. Along the way, I show how quantization is not only central to my composition practice but fundamental to the act of composing; I rethink the basic epistemological principles of PhD research, using John Cage's ideology of chance and Arthur Koestler's idea of bisociation; I develop a new set of categories for classifying artworks that use combinatorics, under the umbrella neologism 'completism'; expand upon James Tenney's ideas to create a new typology of musical form based on completist principles; and finish by composing the bibliography, font, page-layout, semantics, word choice, and syntax of the Conclusion of this thesis.

The following commentary details aspects of my recent compositions attempting to bring about intersections between subjects and objects. I demonstrate how my compositions highlight an interplay between the poles of subjectivity vs objectivity, human vs nonhuman and nature vs culture. Various musical precedents rooted in objectivity form the basis of this endeavour, such as the inaudible cosmic vibrations proposed by the Pythagoreans' Musica universalis, the chance procedures of mid twentieth-century experimental music, and the Platonic forms of Tom Johnson. However, although these standpoints do attempt to broaden the scope of music beyond the human sphere, they remain most often framed by transcendent discourse without explicitly addressing the subjective implications of such work. I propose an approach to composition that distances itself from a transcendental perspective, instead choosing to highlight the effects that objectivity elicits in human beings, while maintaining the presence of an external reality that remains inscrutable. Thus, my portfolio addresses the precise ways in which subjectivity remains present even within an objective musical discourse, whether through exploring psychological responses to chance, the existential boredom brought on by unchanging forms, subjective reactions to the objecti�cation of the human body, and the input of the imagination in the face of withdrawn or speculative musical objects.

The submitted portfolio and accompanying thesis focus on the subject of doubles and duplication and their application as musical materials and compositional devices in my own work and, to a lesser extent, throughout the history of music and other artistic disciplines. In this study I look at the acoustic, structural, perceptual and aesthetic implications derived from the duplication of sonic materials, instruments, objects, setups, gestures and performers. From a general perspective, the use of duplication raises a number of issues of identical sounds by two or more sonic sources, the importance of synchronicity or asynchronicity in the suggestion of aural and visual analogies, the role of distance in the establishment of auditory correspondences, the degree of similarity required by specific materials to be identified as doubles, the role of the performer in creating a sense of gestural and performative duplication, the relationship between acoustic and acousmatic sources in the delineation of sonic parallels, etc. In this thesis, the subject of duplication is chiefly regarded from spatial, performative and sonic perspectives. The sections focusing on spatial issues examine the function of duplicated setups of objects and instruments in the space of performance. The analysis of performative elements addresses the role of gestural duplication and doppelgangers as musical and scenic resources. Finally, the sections on sound investigate the perceptual and aesthetic effects of duplicated sonic sources, echoic interactions and sonic displacements. This thesis is structured into two main parts. The first part (chapters 1 & 2) examines the different possible categories and models of duplication and their usage throughout music history. The second part (chapters 3 & 4) focuses on the application and different roles of duplication in my own music. The issue of duplication has been explored in the works composed throughout the research process. A total of six pieces (approximately 105 minutes of music) have been written over the course of this PhD. The issues present in these compositions have been thoroughly examined in my thesis, becoming the main object of study. Each of these works approaches duplication in a different manner, highlighting the versatility and potential compositional applications of this phenomenon.

This thesis describes my transversal approach to composition and underlines how structuralist psychoanalys is, Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, and areas of thinking in the nanosciences played a central role on my conceptions of space and time. My most original contribution lies in the endeavour to elaborate a malleable and evanescent musical matter in which micro-fluctuations exert their forces on macro-entities creating a musical space-time as elastic and mobile as that of the psychic unconscious. The pieces are conceived as cartographies of flux, fleeting constellations of sound particles whose migrations either interweave filaments in elastic and heterochronic textures or converge on an object. Small modular pendulums are the elementary figures of this ramified network. They connect to one another and permeate the musical matter. Time is multiple and pluridirectional. Jumps and rebounds, temporal gaps, annunciative anticipation and retroactive reverberation (Green), keep combining fragmentary elements which echo with one another and which allow the listener to perceive the work of time as a "compound of splinters", an assemblage of "quanta of memory", or a pure flow. Repetition has a paradoxical function, both favouring the identification of abstract gestures and their step-by-step mutation. Sound trajectories are envisaged as "pulsounds" and chains of "sonifiers", in reference to concepts of pulsional phenomena (Freud) or signifiers (Lacan). This intersection between psychic topology and sound topography also investigates the structural potential of relationships between humans and urban environments. The addition of electronics, the use of both instrumental and mechanical or urban sounds, materialize a transitional space (Winnicott) with ambiguous boundaries between inside and outside, a hybrid sound territory, a zone of indiscernibility (Deleuze) between mind and machine, scream and noise, the organic and the mechanical. These evolving sound diagrams refer to nanotechnology’s atom-by-atom engineering with its increasing crossing-over of animate and inanimate matters. Sound processes operate as quasi microscopic units grouped in transitory configurations under the action of forces,and with this perspective I have coined the term "nanomusic" to describe my musical project.

This thesis consists of a portfolio of nine compositions accompanied by a written commentary and (where possible) audio recordings of these pieces. The compositions span a variety of instrumentations from large orchestral works to solo and chamber works. In the accompanying commentary I discuss the technical foundations of my compositional language, examining selected aspects of my gestural, harmonic, and timbral language to shed light on my creative process. The development and prominence of each of these aspects is discussed, with particular emphasis on the evolution of my timbral language. I demonstrate how I use extra-musical stimuli to determine compositional parameters for various musical elements affecting large-scale structures, gestural, harmonic and timbral language and more broadly the aesthetic impulses of a piece. As part of this, I discuss the importance of a concept that feeds into a work’s title to help determine various structural elements. I also explain how the views and thoughts of composers such as Kaija Saariaho, Arlene Sierra, Thomas Adès and Dai Fujikura have helped shape my approach to extra-musical stimuli. Chapter One focuses on a number of aspects of my compositional language, including extra-musical stimuli, gesture, harmony and timbre and covers a discussion of Stormscape, Momentations, Night Airs, Shadows Create the Night and Nacreous Contours. It also considers historical precedents for the techniques that I used in my works, tracking something of a trajectory through these to my music. In Chapter Two I discuss my choral work Apparitions in more detail, exploring how textural elements help to define the structure and enhance word-painting. Chapter Three centres on a detailed discussion of how extra-musical stimulus has been mapped musically affecting parameters such as structure, gesture and harmony in Roil in Stillness: Ripples and Waves. In Chapter Four a detailed discussion of a personal creative process sheds analytical light on Rainbow Fires. Here a number of different aspects are discussed with a focus on extra-musical stimuli, gesture, harmony, timbre and the application of ‘information theory’.

The current thesis is a portfolio of ten musical works composed during the period of 2011 and 2015, including instrumental, mixed media and acousmatic (stereo and multichannel) compositions. These works were developed and composed at my home studio in Oporto (from 2011) and at the Electroacoustic Music Studios at the University of Birmingham (2014 – 2015). This thesis also features observations and commentaries about technical and aesthetical issues that were objects of study during my creative process, which uses musical elements from my culture as inspiration for new musical works. Hence, it presents a reflection on and the validation of results that came from the exploration of several procedures during my development at the University of Birmingham Electroacoustic Music Studios and a chapter dedicated to the traditional instrument from the Azores – the viola da terra – and the two compositions that focus on this instrument. A USB stick is attached to this thesis, containing the audio performances of all musical works, scores and electronic version of this document.

This portfolio consists of a series of acousmatic compositions presented in stereophonic and multichannel formats. The works in this portfolio reflect a variety of different compositional approaches undertaken during a period of time between 2010-2013. In this compositional research particular emphasis is given to the use of diverse sonic materials and their relationship in the exploration of acousmatic composition, along with discussion of important underlying principles and ideas, such as evocation, topos, mood and emotional states, anamnesis and catharsis. In addition, a secondary part of this compositional research uses text and voice within a musical context while still assimilating the aforementioned notions. Furthermore, this commentary reveals the compositional process in general by detailing its formation. Each piece is then individually discussed in order to outline the compositional objectives in relation to the key subjects of investigation.

One of the primary focuses in the works presented and discussed herein is the juxtaposition of many disparate musical styles, recordings, and sound worlds within each individual piece. This juxtaposition extends to combining live improvisation meticulously created non-realtime elements, and elements of generative processes in the creation of individual works. A secondary theme is my attitude to accessibility and how this informs my work with audiovisual elements.

This commentary accompanies a portfolio of pieces which combine soundscape composition and record production methods with aspects of autoethnographic practice. This work constitutes embodied research into relations between everyday auditory experience, music production and reception, and selfhood. The commentary draws together the methods and practices from which the pieces have emerged - which range across field recording, sound collage, installation, audio-visual composition, and performative action - to present the project as a cohesive series of sonic autoethnographies. Recent theory and practice in sound and in autoethnography is considered in relation to the portfolio, which presents a personal listening culture through multiple and layered representations of self. Discussion of the pieces is used to propose generalisable insights in the related areas of personal listening, record production, and soundscape composition.

Data-driven sequence models have long played a role in the analysis and generation of musical information. Such models are of interest in computational musicology, computer-aided music composition, and tools for music education among other applications. This dissertation beginswith an experiment tomodel sequences of musical pitch in melodies with a class of purely data-driven predictive models collectively known as Connectionist models. It was demonstrated that a set of six such models could performon par with, or better than state-of-the-art n-gram models previously evaluated in an identical setting. A new model known as the Recurrent Temporal Discriminative Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RTDRBM), was introduced in the process and found to outperform the rest of the models. A generalisation of this modelling task was also explored, and involved extending the set of musical features used as input by the models while still predicting pitch as before. The improvement in predictive performance which resulted from adding these new input features is encouraging for future work in this direction. Based on the above success of the RTDRBM, its application was extended to a non-musical sequence labelling task, namely Optical Character Recognition. This extension involved a modification to the model’s original prediction algorithm as a result of relaxing an assumption specific to the melody modelling task. The generalised model was evaluated on a benchmark dataset and compared against a set of 8 baseline models where it faired better than all of them. Furthermore, a theoretical extension to an existingmodel which was also employed in the above pitch prediction task - the Discriminative Restricted Boltzmann Machine (DRBM) - was proposed. This led to three new variants of the DRBM (which originally contained Logistic Sigmoid hidden layer activations), withHyperbolic Tangent, Binomial and Rectified Linear hidden layer activations respectively. The first two of these have been evaluated here on the benchmark MNIST dataset and shown to perform on par with the original DRBM.

This submission investigates computer-aided performances in which musicians receive auditory information via earphones. The interaction between audio-scores (musical material sent through earpieces to performers) and visual input (musical notation) changes the traditional relationship between composer, conductor, performer and listener. Audio-scores intend to complement and transform the printed score. They enhance the accuracy of execution of difficult rhythmic or pitch relationships, increase the specificity of instructions given to the performer (for example, in the domain of timbre), and may elicit original and spontaneous responses from the performer in real-time. The present research is inspired by, and positions itself within traditional European notational practices. Through a reflection on the nature and function of notation in a variety of repertoires, this study examines how my own compositional research – and its reliance on audio-scores— relates to and differs from the models considered. Following the realisation of pieces investigating complex rhythms and the use of recorded samples as borrowed/found material, results have proven to be highly effective with a group of vocalists, with works in which audio-scores facilitated the precise realisation of microtonal material. Audio-scores also proved particularly useful in sitespecific ‘immersive’ concerts/installations. In these settings, audio-scores mitigate challenges associated with placing musicians at an unusual distances from one another, e.g. around the audience. This submission constitutes an original contribution to knowledge in the field of computer-aided performance in that it demonstrates how musical notation and current ubiquitous audio technologies may be used in tandem in the conception and performance of new works. Recent findings include a Web application currently being developed at IRCAM. The application is based on a local server and allows the synchronous delivery of audio/screen-scores via the browser of the performers’ smartphones, tablets, or computers. Keywords: audio-score, click track, composition, computeraided performance, earpiece, microtonality, music, notation, performance, screen-score, server, voice.

This thesis presents a body of eight original musical compositions inspired by the phenomenology of mental imagery, together with a written commentary which describes in depth the compositional process undertaken whilst composing them, defines the concept 'mental imagery' as applied to this process. and sets the concept within a broad theoretical framework which addresses cognitive sciences, the philosophy of meaning and perception, and music historiography. The study codifies a new and original methodology for music composition based on the author's personal account of mental imagery and its influence or permeation into his practice as a composer. The written commentary is structured in two chapters. Chapter One begins with a detailed description of the author's notion of mental imagery, which arose as a natural outcome of his subjective compositional practice. Mental imagery is then compared with ideas, concepts and arguments that address extrinsic elements in music and cross-modal categories in perception. The concept of 'mental imagery' proposed by the author, and therefore the whole compositional process described, is discussed through the lens of the ecological theory of perception and the virtual representation of music, which places mental imagery squarely within contemporary accounts in the field of cognitive sciences and the philosophy of perception. A discussion on the topic of musical meaning follows, addressing arguments that define meaning as a multiform, interdisciplinary concept. Chapter One ends with an insight into music analysis research from the second half of the 20th century, leading to the statement that mental imagery might have been neglected by some music theorists in the recent past. It is argued that this is due to a prevailing epistemological framework that gave priority to formal and technical features of musical material. Chapter Two of this written commentary undertakes a deep and detailed analysis of four of the compositions presented. This analysis gives mental imagery a central role in the descriptive discourse, being sensitive to all the arguments discussed in Chapter One. The analytical style resonates with other accounts such as 'performative analysis' by Nicholas Cook (2002) and 'analog mode of discourse' by John Rahn (1979), and borrows key terms from 'vitality affects' by David Stern (1985). The whole thesis aims to be a valuable example of compositional process inspired by an original, unique and well-described concept: mental imagery. This compositional process codifies new methods or models for compositional practice that may be disseminated to fellow composers. Moreover, the study could also inform performers, theorists and listeners, who may approach their practice in a different light through reflection on the topic of mental imagery and all the associated processes that are here described.

This study takes as its stimulus the unusual dynamic markings in Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 130. Presenting an immediate interpretational problem for performers this leads to questions of execution and how this influences the character of the music. Whilst both analysts and performers use evocative metaphors to describe musical character, the explication of how this is achieved through performance has been little explored in academia. The study focuses on the intersection between metaphors found in the literature surrounding Beethoven’s late quartets and the performance choices made in eight renowned string quartet recordings. The ambiguity of Beethoven’s late style and unusual nature of his dynamic indications offer a fascinating case study of this intersection. The methodology uses metaphor as an analytical frame work through which discussions about performance decisions take place, suggesting one metaphor or another, usually in a spectrum of variations. This sees dynamics as a potential stimulus for manipulation of not just volume, but also vibrato, rubato, articulation, portamento and other factors often framed by the choice of tempo. Different treatments of these performance techniques suggest varying metaphorical characterisations. These are summarised through verbal descriptions of the performer’s choices with reference to the score. Chapter 1 focuses on two awkward dynamic markings that dominate the first movement: the hairpin crescendo to piano and rapid alternations of forte and piano in fast music. Chapter 2 focuses on hairpin swells which create not only unusual disruptions in the middle movements but also expansive lyricism in the Cavatina movement. Chapter 3 moves from localised dynamic markings to longer passages which are characterised by unusual dynamic stasis and descriptive terms in the Cavatina. This study shows how these dynamics have been interpreted in many different ways, through the variety and interaction of a number of different performance techniques. Far from establishing fixed definitions for these dynamics, this opens up possibilities for more expressive freedom for performers, not less.

This PhD reports research on current representative performance paradigms using various interfaces for real time interaction with computer-based musical environments. Each device was selected to cover a particular range of interfaces. Research covers the following areas: hardware interfaces (tangible & game devices); live coding; optical devices, and hardware prototyping. The projects highlight affordances, comparative strengths and weaknesses, and provide suggestions for further improvements for each paradigm. Particular focus is given to the importance of mapping. Each project comprises corresponding software that was developed to facilitate each performance paradigm. The work is not intended to provide an exhaustive evaluation of the technology used in this research; instead, it aims to examine its feasibility for artistic and musical context. The outcomes of the examinations include a series of musical performances employing improvisation as the basis for composition. These paradigms are examined in a live context as well as fixed media that uses material originating in live performances.

Through a series of creative projects this doctorate set out to research how computer-assisted composition (CAC) of music affects decision-making in my compositional practice. By reporting on the creative research journey, this doctorate is a contribution towards a better understanding of the implications of CAC by offering new insights into the composing process. It is also a contribution to the composition discipline as new techniques were devised, together with new applications of existing techniques. Using OpenMusic as the sole programming environment, the manual/machine interface was explored through different balances between manual and algorithmic composition and through aesthetic reflection guiding the composing process. This helped clarify the purpose, adequacy and nature of each method as decisions were constantly being taken towards completing the artistic projects. The most suitable use of algorithms was as an environment for developing, testing, refining and assessing compositional techniques and the music materials they generate: a kind of musical laboratory. As far as a technique can be described by a set of rules, algorithms can help formulate and refine it. Also capable of incorporating indeterminism, they can act as powerful devices in discovering unforeseen musical implications and results. Algorithms alone were found to be insufficient to simulate human creative thought because aspects such as (but not limited to) imagination, judgement and personal bias could only, and hypothetically, be properly simulated by the most sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence. Furthermore, important aspects of composition such as instrumentation, articulation and orchestration were not subjected to algorithmic treatment because, not being sufficiently integrated in OpenMusic currently, they would involve a great deal of knowledge to be specified and adapted to computer language. These shortcomings of algorithms, therefore, implied varying degrees of manual interventions to be carried out on raw materials coming out of their evaluations. A combination of manual and algorithmic composition was frequently employed so as to properly handle musical aspects such as cadence, discourse, monotony, mechanicalness, surprise, and layering, among others. The following commentary illustrates this varying dialogue between automation and intervention, placing it in the wider context of other explorations at automating aspects of musical composition.

Sailing on is an investigation into how light music has evolved from its origins into a style of music for the twenty-first century. I am a light music composer and a contemporary use of the style is explored in a portfolio of compositions, all in score form, substantiated by an autoethnographical commentary. Light as a term to describe music was first used in the nineteenth-century to label music that was created for the entertainment of the masses and it was sometimes used to explain the more accessible works of ‘serious’ composers. The music enjoyed a golden age of approximately one hundred years between 1870 and 1970 and this study contextualises light music in respect of the functions that it fulfils and the relationships it has undergone with serious and popular music during the period and to the present day. Entertainment and accessibility to mass markets are terms used more in relation to commercial music rather than art music and the thesis includes an exploration into the role of light music as part of the industrialised music businesses as well as being at the forefront of technological developments. The relationship between art and money has been difficult for some to reconcile and part of the reason for the criticism and neglect of light music by many in the music establishment and these aspects are considered as part of the contextualisation. I have identified a number of common musical and expressive elements in light music and an analysis of techniques is presented as a means to describe the characteristics of the style. The works surveyed have been selected from a period that embraces the golden age to the present with examples from records, radio, television, film, games and web based media. All these influences plus my own experiences in music have been considered during the composition of the portfolio of music that proffers my interpretation of light music for the twenty-first century.

This thesis tracks my journey through eight creative works which employ a broad range of methodologies to map the dynamic life of lines and that focus on concepts of ephemerality, gestural tracing, grains and swarms of sound, and temporal independence. My original contribution to knowledge in composition is led by my personal relationship to sound as mediated through physical gesture in performance. Drawing upon the work of anthropologist Tim Ingold, I have worked with video as a medium for my own sketch processes and as a scoring platform. Video is used to capture and document qualities of motion that bring choreographic and multimodal thinking into my music, propagating divergent approaches to structuring and determining parameters. Through this I have developed ways of thinking compositionally through the visual medium and worked with micro and macro qualities in timbre and movement to achieve effects that I term 'dynamic stasis'. Central to my thinking is an expanded concept of the line as gestalts of sound, video, bodily and mechanical movement, with form arising from a meshwork of such lines. The line as represented in video and musical action contributes to the tendencies and behaviours of precisely notated sound and physical movements in my music, that are reflected in irregular divisions of time and frequent fluctuations of sound characteristics. My discussion of the visual and choreographic perspectives of my notation and multimodal ways of thinking about composition is contextualised with examples from composers such as Jennifer Walshe, Simon Steen- Andersen and Stefan Prins, and the video scoring systems of Cat Hope.

The first half of this commentary/thesis will explore changing perceptions of the musical work and the creative process. Ultimately, it will seek to identify and expose the myth of what we might call the ‘tyrannical composer’. That is to say, a suspicion of what is implied hierarchically by the figure of the composer and the consequences this has on critical thought, scholarship, performance and the public perception of music, new and old. By drawing upon recent research in, among other things, semiotics and mediation theory, I seek to reimagine the traditional composer-performer-audience relationship as something far more democratic and linear than is often given credit. Discussions typically reserved for overtly challenging and ‘experimental’ genres of music can here be reframed and proposed as a defence of related but contrasting styles of acoustic avant-garde composition. The above argument will be supported in the second chapter by a selection of case studies drawing upon my own portfolio of compositions. Analysis of some of these works will ask questions about composer authority and agency and draw upon my practical experience as composer of the works in question. The composer will ultimately be understood not as a dictator-like figure and privileged arbiter of the ‘musical work’, but as a democratically motivated creative agent, dialectically and collaboratively involved in the mediation and reception of the performed work.

This thesis comprises a portfolio of acousmatic compositions which explore the evocation of emotion and the expression of meaning in electroacoustic music. These works, created and developed in the Electroacoustic Music Studios of the University of Birmingham, embrace both stereo and multichannel formats. In the accompanying Commentary, I also discuss compositional procedures and provide some analytical notes on each work, along with an outline of my own personal development as an electroacoustic composer during the period of the PhD programme.

My work during the last few years, parallel to teaching and concert management, has been focused on instrumental composition, composition with electronic media, sound design and performance. Spontaneous and continuous experiments in all these fields have enabled me to explore and develop many compositional techniques and processes, searching in this way for a unique personal language based on my own experience of listening. The following portfolio is a detailed examination of my compositions during this period, clarifying the issues in instrumental and electroacoustic music composition which relate to performance, spatialization and live electronic processing; my intention here is to develop, systematize and automate some of the currently vital processes in this area in a flexible, and adaptable way, thereby contributing to new developments in signal processing and enhancing the integration of live instruments and electronics, with the ultimate aim of delivering to the listener the most satisfying experience possible. In the works submitted, my special interest has been to investigate which current techniques, media, software, and interfaces are most appropriate for each given work. I have balanced these against existing standards which have long been fixed through tradition and technology – thus contributing to a better understanding of works of the past and at the same time seeking to move forward in the field of composition, sound design, live computer music, performance and spatialization.

The following chapters describe compositional methods applied to the compositions of the portfolio (Volume I), which consists of eight works for instruments and electronic sound, as well as one purely electronic piece. The main concern in all these works is aspects of open form and, to a lesser extent, indeterminacy during performance. I highlight the research I have undertaken in preparation for each of the compositions, show how all of these pieces are progressively linked by my evolving interest in open form, and place them in context with works by other composers, past and present, who have employed similar, or different, experimental procedures. Volume II, the composition commentary, includes a technical appendix, explaining the different software processes for the individual works, and a recourses appendix containing recordings of all of the nine compositions, as well as all of the Max patches, Max for Live devices and sound files I have programmed and created for the electronic parts of the pieces.

This is a commentary on seven pieces I have created to explore the idea of music as the social activity of performance – including the rituals around it – instead of as abstract works. The pieces explore the relationship between performers and audience and the effects performance space has on that relationship, by addressing the function of the fourth wall as part of musical performance. Focusing on the inherent theatricality of musical performance, the pieces were created by experimenting with the non-sonic constituents of performance – i.e. the space that hosts performance and the rules that govern it, the distance between performers and audience and their behaviour towards each other. In short, my intention was to challenge performance conventions found in the performing tradition of Classical music by composing new music with an emphasis on the non-sonic constituents of performance. The commentary investigates various concepts about musical performance, which provided the ideas behind the pieces in my portfolio. The portfolio of pieces includes video documentation, descriptions of the pieces, scores and programme notes on each of the pieces. The videos and programme notes can be found in the accompanying DVD and in the following website: http://artefactsofperformance.blogspot.co.uk.

This thesis addresses the question of how socio-political differences and lived experiences of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity may be perceived to manifest in the making of sound arts and experimental musics with a specific focus upon works made by women. Drawing upon compositions, installations and artist-archives including works by Lina Džuverovic, Anne Hilde Neset, Cathy Lane, Emma Hedditch, Sonia Boyce, Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether, the research considers the different ways in which the category of “woman” has been historically silenced, erased, ignored and disqualified from and misrepresented within dominant historical sound and music histories. I then ask what representations of “woman” might have materialised within this relational paradigm that “privileges the perspective of an archetypal Western, white, and male subject” as the universal subject of sound (Rodgers 2010b: v)? In particular noise and silence are addressed as the assumed polar limits of sound arts and experimental musics combined with a reconsideration of the fundamental parameters of pitch, timbre and amplitude as sound’s dominant laws, norms and conventions. The analysis of how the artists addressed within the research have in turn used and critiqued historically dominant representations through their aesthetic practices aims to demonstrate the ways in which these artists have challenged, resisted or transformed sound art and experimental music practices in the historical present. This research aims to contribute new insights within the emerging field of feminist sound studies by connecting social and aesthetic processes in contemporary sound arts and experimental music practices within a discourse of feminist composition. Such a discourse seeks to contribute to the materialisation of alternative sound and music economies through the subtle calibration of compositional strategies that seek to displace dominant compositional processes intent upon regulating the noise of the social as a field of normalisation for the reproduction of the individual, self-sovereign and universally masculine subject of sound. Ultimately, what this research seeks to contribute is how to experience feminist composition as a social event.

Harmonic Horizons presents my research regarding the structuring of harmonic material in my music written between 2011 and 2013. The selected work, the oratorio Johannes Uppenbarelse, illustrates how I have established and developed my harmonic language and how this is implemented chordally, melodically and structurally. The goal of this research is the development of my strategy to create a new kind of functional harmony, which utilises notions of relative consonance and dissonance within its own defined boundaries.