City Research Online

Abstract

How can elements from late Renaissance and Baroque organ repertoire be used as critical and narrative devices in contemporary composition to explore the formation and perception of canon and instrument?

Organists are familiar with retrospective pieces, from J. S. Bach’s arrangements of Antonio Vivaldi’s concertos, to Franz Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on the Theme B–A–C–H, and Sigfrid Karg-Elert’s Homage to Handel. The motivations for looking back vary, whether celebratory, didactic, parodic, or any number of other reasons. This thesis presents a compositional approach that capitalizes on the significance of earlier music and composers as cultural artefacts, and details how a set of procedures were developed to defamiliarize historic work-templates in order to explore aspects of the pipe organ and its associated musicking that can be taken for granted. These procedures operate at four levels: the structural organization of pipe organ sound with expanded counterpoint, the construction of performative scenarios presenting different iterations of that sound, the interrelation of elements mediated by those performances, and the sense of function, purpose, and ends arising from the mediations. Taken together, they enable the listener to get beneath the surface of the work-templates and what they embody to uncover old linkages—and make new ones—between creative traditions, communities of practice, and sounding bodies.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	M Music and Books on Music > M Music
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity > Performing Arts School of Communication & Creativity > School of Communication & Creativity Doctoral Theses Doctoral Theses

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