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Beyond binaries
No full textOne of my favourite moments in the film Donnie Darko (Kelly 2001) is the moment where Donnie (played by a youthful Jake Gyllenhaal) is forced to categorise a life experience as either belonging to the realm of ‘fear’ or ‘love’. He refuses to cooperate, arguing that ‘you can’t just lump things into two categories; things aren’t that simple,’ and is punished as a result. But what Darko reveals in his classroom rebellion is an intuitive sense that when we
attempt to view complex situations through a binary ‘frame’, we ignore the situation’s complexity and the exercise becomes meaningless.
I feel the same way about the ‘excellence / inclusion’ debate. If we allow ourselves to be drawn into a discussion of musical practices in these binary terms, we are reducing the complexity of music’s multi-faceted impact, thereby missing the opportunity to advance our knowledge of music’s power. As Ben Goldacre might caution, “I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that” (Goldacre 2014). Music is ubiquitous in people’s lives (MacDonald et al. 2013) and its power to impact on people’s experience (of themselves,
their community, their place, their culture) goes way beyond the simple binary implied by these two terms (Hallam 2015)
Libraries gave us power
No full textThe practices of Community Music (CM) have tended to evolve in very practical ways, amongst communities of practitioners and their communities of participants (Camlin 2015b, p.236). Because of this, developing a ‘theory’ of CM practice through research has been elusive, and the endeavour of doing so viewed with suspicion by some of its practitioners. Reflecting on my own experiences of developing a professional praxis - building a critical understanding of my own practice through doctoral study - I suggest, however, that this kind of praxial development can help establish CM as a ’polyphonic truth’ within the Academy. There are a number of reasons for wishing to do so; as well as increasing the value of CM’s diverse practices as cultural capital, it also helps give our field more of a voice in current debate. The emergent turn in cultural policy toward more sophisticated methods of understanding cultural value (Crossick & Kaszynska 2016), participation and ‘everyday creativity’ (Hunter et al. 2016) speaks directly to CM practices, and it is important that as a field, we are able to contribute to and inform the shape of this discourse from a position of confidence and authority. One way of seeing the fundamental changes to the field of music - and consequently music education - brought about in recent years by the transformation of music’s economic value through online distribution, is that of a ‘hysteresis’ (Bourdieu 1977, p.83; Hardy 2008, pp.126–144), where there is a time lag between changes in the field, and changes in the ‘habitus’ of the field’s occupants. However, while this ‘hysteresis’ is not confined to the field of music, building a critical understanding of what happens to our field as it undergoes the radical transformations it is currently experiencing, will potentially give us useful insights into our future cultural lives. The massive social, political, economic, environmental, cultural and technological transformations currently disrupting human experience across the globe will almost certainly increase in complexity over time, and what ‘music’ means to citizens thirty years hence is likely to be radically different to what it meant to citizens thirty years ago. If we are to develop a critical understanding of music – and music education – practices in such a rapidly changing cultural landscape, the role of the musician-as-researcher is therefore one to be encouraged. As an emergent voice in the Academy, CM has a great deal to offer this discourse, because its practices are broadly emancipatory, inclusive and accessible, all of which are key concepts in understanding the future role and value of music in society
Uniting the true and the beautiful: music and text in the age of Goethe
No full textStudy day convened by Norbert Meyn, held at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, November 2009
Migas (book 1)
No full textFor solo piano, duration (of whole set) 25 minutes. Migas is a collection of 11 brief piano pieces, written over a period of 33 years for the pianists Rolf Hind and Andrew Zolinsky.
1) a postcard piece
2) the night of the blood red moon
3) ashes, ashes
4) Four Humours
5) a long cast shadow
6) for L.C. at 50
7) toy
8) moonviewing
9) pink sugar skull
10) Mab
11) skull redux.
Migas (book 2) is now available: see https://researchonline.rcm.ac.uk/id/eprint/1980/
String quartet: danger of the disappearance of things
No full textFor string quartet, duration 20 minutes. Commissioned by the Leeds Festival 1990
Penumbra
No full textFor chamber orchestra, duration 13 minutes.
This work was commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra with additional funds from the Britten-Pears Foundation. It was premiered on 13 February 2003 by the LSO conducted by George Benjamin at the Barbican Centre London. The revised version was first performed by the London Sinfonietta conducted by Oliver Knussen on 2 April 2004
A group of memories
No full textFor solo piano, duration 10 minutes.
The first complete performance of this piece was given by the composer at King's College, London in October 1995
Incantation
No full textFor clarinet and piano.
This piece was written in 1997 as part of the Guildhall Young Composers Series
Polygon window (perpetuum immobile) [reduced version]
No full textFor chamber ensemble (soprano saxophone, 2 pianos, vibraphone, 4 marimbas and 4 percussionists), duration 6 minutes, after Aphex Twin’s 'Polygon Window.' This is a reduction of the original composition (see https://researchonline.rcm.ac.uk/id/eprint/1494/) for smaller ensemble