In Search of Musical Language: an investigation of the Tone Clock as a gestalt-based approach to musical organisation

In this research, the concept of Peter Schat’s Tone Clock and Jenny McLeod’s extension of his theory are explored as a gestalt-based approach to composition, in the search for a holistic musical language. It aims to investigate the extent to which the Tone Clock can function as a holistic generative principle within composition. The 51,000-word thesis shows how Schat’s and McLeod’s work evolved from the mid-20th century, expanding its theoretical encompassment to a potential holistic musical language, with new insights drawn from McLeod’s unpublished papers. Chapter 1 sets out the context. Due to its underrepresentation in music pedagogy, the Tone Clock’s lineage is traced to position it in the history of contemporary Western classical music. Chapter 2 discusses Schat’s theory and McLeod’s extension of the Tone Clock, and how it suggests possibilities for a gestalt-based approach to musical organisation that can permeate multiple structural levels and musical space. Chapter 3 provides a detailed analytical commentary of each composition using the established theoretical framework, and indicates future directions for research. The portfolio of six compositions, totalling approximately 60 minutes of music, systematically explores how the Tone Clock can shape musical structures, including elements other than pitch. Seven studies in interaction investigates the interaction of ‘minor’ and ‘MAJOR’ intervallic poles, a fundamental part of Tone Clock theory; An Exequy explores my ‘halftone’ approach to understanding the Tone Clock; The flood on which all move and wish to move investigates spatialisation of the Tone Clock; Form gulping after formlessness explores the microtonal string harmonics, with the Tone Clock ‘translating’ these structures; Sikah maps the Tone Clock’s organisational principle to 24-TET; Auguries of Innocence, a thirteen-piece song cycle (due to time limitations, only six pieces are included), unifies all compositional threads set out in the thesis and explored in the earlier pieces.