Wigens, Jeremy. 2014. Portfolio of Compositions for Creative Musicians and Accompanying Commentary. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

The portfolio works and accompanying thesis explore various structural possibilities for involving participants in the creative process of making a musical work. Improvisation of various kinds is a common feature of all the pieces, which are designed to be played, ideally, by improvising musicians able to engage proactively with the material using their own developed, personal musical languages and initiative. I have explored the idea of ‘musician as material’ in developing the portfolio and some of the many ways in which personalised individual languages can be harnessed in the creation of time-specific works. Fundamental to my research has been the questioning of the role of the composer in developing a basis for genuine collaboration and shared creative input. In devising the pieces as frameworks for collective or individual activity, I am indifferent as to both how they might become transformed or used in the future, and to their potential for attaining any state of permanence. This is because I consider them as springboards for adaptation and realisation by other individuals and also because I consider them as means of social activity designed to generate imaginative thinking rather than as fixed entities. Various formats have been used to document the pieces ranging from the tabular in Guests and Tickbox, in which verbal descriptions of sounds of undetermined sequence are set out, to the more formal sequential notation of the pieces mutant cp, Liquorice Licks, epochal natter and olinola. The musicians taking part in the pieces will deploy a range of practices from completely open improvisation, through choosing from variously specified materials in what has been termed aleatoric practice, to the occasional realisation of formally notated passages.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00010145
Additional Information:	Portfolio contains: 1. Guests 2. mutant cp 3. Liquorice Licks 4. The Bags of Time 5. Tickbox 6. epochal natter 7. Workshop 8. Olinola
Keywords:	open score; improvisation; creative musicians; collective creativity; collaboration; musician as material
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Music
Date:	2014
Item ID:	10145
Date Deposited:	09 May 2014 14:31
Last Modified:	08 Sep 2022 08:58
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/10145

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