Wednesday 1 February, 12-4pm, CM108
In Lab 5 we feature work that uses found materials and processes, considering the way music references and translates aspects of the world. We welcome Matthew Shlomowitz, who will discuss his Popular Contexts series, and he is joined by two of his PhD students from Southampton, Ben Jameson and Alex Glyde-Bates. The lab will include work for Guitar Hero controllers, multi-coloured signs and sampled percussion. Despite the photo, Phil Collins will not be joining us.
12-2pm: Ben Jameson / Alex Glyde-Bates
Ben Jameson / Construction in Metal – Authenticity, Performance and ‘Virtual’ Guitars
In Construction in Metal (2015), for electric guitar and Guitar Hero controller, I investigate issues of authenticity in musical performance through engagement with video game culture. Using sampling, imitation and choreography, the piece explores relationships between the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’, between ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’ performance, and the musical and choreographic associations of the electric guitar’s history. I will outline how the composition of this work was informed by prominent discourses surrounding the electric guitar and the Guitar Hero games, as well as establishing how it fits into current trends towards integrating physical and visual aspects of performance into composition. The discussion will also include consideration of my notational approaches, and how these relate to aspects of Guitar Hero gameplay.
Alex Glyde-Bates / Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again: Translation and Tautology in One and Four Canons
One and Four Canons (2014) is a partially-open score work for five performers. The piece draws on the idea, as conceived by the American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth, that art is a tautology. Kosuth’s argument for this follows Wittgenstein’s definition of a tautology in propositional logic; that a proposition is a tautology it all its possible permutations are true. In One and Four Canons, the same — highly recognisable — musical object is rendered in three different media. This presentation explores how I addressed the practical and communicative possibilities and difficulties of cross-medial translations and tautologies in this piece, before briefly concluding with some approaches I have taken in subsequent works.
2-4pm: Matthew Shlomowitz / Listening Out
Drawing on a range of fields and approaches, Matthew Shlomowitz discusses the way musical moments can reference aspects of the world, the world of music, and aspects of the world through music. These ideas will be considered in relation to his recent composition, Popular Contexts, Volume 8: Five Soundscapes for a Contemporary Percussionist.
Matthew Shlomowitz (b. 1975) is a composer of concert music and performance pieces. Raised in Adelaide, Australia, he now lives in London. He is Associate Professor in Composition at University of Southampton, and co-directs the new music ensemble Plus Minus with Joanna Bailie. He has composed works for groups such as asamisimasa, bESIdES, Calefax, Ensemble Offspring,EXAUDI, Ives Ensemble, Nieuw Ensemble, Quatuor Diotima, Ricciotti Ensemble, Speak Percussion,Wespoke New Music Company and soloists Claire Edwardes, Juliet Fraser, Mark Knoop and Håkon Stene and Stephane Ginsburgh. He has three ongoing projects: Popular Contexts, a series combining recordings of recognisable real world sound with instrumental music; Letter Pieces, which combine physical actions, music and text; and Public Lectures about Music, a series of lecture-pieces addressing ideas such as aesthetic judgement and emotional responses to music.
