Multiplicity and Elasticity: investigating the structural implications of temporally layered materials and their playing out through a portfolio of compositions

This PhD documents a practice-based exploration of the relationship between temporally layered materials and musical structure, with a particular focus on temporal elasticity and compositional process. It proposes the novel concepts of ambiguity as multiplicity, polyrhythmic approximation, and a distinction between external and internal rhythmic layering.
The portfolio, of approximately 90 minutes total duration, contains eight compositions scored for chamber instrumental and vocal forces ranging from solo double bass to a mixed ensemble of 14 musicians. Each piece investigates a different approach to temporal layering and elasticity, in turn offering a range of innovative notational solutions. By building upon the established practices of metric modulation, polytempo, and isorhythm, they varyingly explore the decoupling of rhythm, metre, and tempo, and investigate the temporal significance of repetition-variation relationships, instrumental resonance, and timbre. Each of these compositional techniques is employed systematically to devise a number of unique compositional processes centred around material combinatoriality, ordering, and iterative transformation, facilitating the generation of temporally layered materials and the manipulation of their playing out.
The accompanying 10,000-word commentary details the aims, methodology, results, and conclusions of this research, reflectively contextualising the work within the 20th and 21st Century repertoire upon which it builds. Holistically, the PhD documents the development of a novel set of compositional techniques and a personal musical language. This research will be of value to composers working across a range of media and aesthetics, as well as to those interested in the relationship between music and time.