Bates, Joe ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6262-3663 (2024) At Home In Alterity: Systems And Hybridity In Microtonal Tonality. PhD thesis, University of York.
Abstract
This PhD explores how I use microtonal tonality to make strange chords sound like home and familiar chords sound strange again. It consists of a commentary that accompanies a portfolio of twelve musical compositions. In these compositions, I use alterity to facilitate music that resists the ‘attention economy’ (Odell, 2019). My desire to escape the semiotic saturation of digital discourse prompted a search for music that is abstract, ambiguous, discursive, and live. This commentary traces the course of that search, from Neoplatonic systematic thinking to a hybrid practice of intonation.
The systematic approach to quartertone tonality found in the earliest compositions in this portfolio uses intervallic cycles to create interrelated scales, an approach that echoes that of microtonal composers of the 1920s, especially Ivan Wyschnegradsky. Chapter I lays out this system, considers the nature of xenharmonic tonality, and shows how the process of composition made me reconsider my understanding of this tonality as complete and autonomous.
Consequently, in later works I increasingly explored diatonic harmony and Just Intonation. Chapter II examines how I used these resources to recontextualise familiar harmony, using relational Just Intonation tonality and combination tone harmony.
Chapter III focuses on the epistemic changes that precipitated my adoption of a hybrid intonational practice. Drawing on Mira Benjamin (2019), I consider how my use of digital instruments in the composition process resulted in a tendency toward abstract systematisation. I discuss how building a new synthesiser, the Hyasynth, helped me develop an embodied approach to intonation. This transformation in my practice becomes the focus on the commentary, which argues that systematic thinking is a valuable but ultimately limited way to approach microtonal composition.
Metadata
Supervisors: | Suckling, Martin |
---|---|
Keywords: | tonality; microtonality; intonation; Ivan Wyschnegradsky; Hyasynth; composition; Just Intonation; quartertones; 24EDO; xenharmonic |
Awarding institution: | University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > School of Arts and Creative Technologies (York) |
Depositing User: | Dr Joe Bates |
Date Deposited: | 12 Nov 2024 07:47 |
Last Modified: | 12 Nov 2024 07:47 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:etheses.whiterose.ac.uk:35888 |
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