A Musical Composition for Large Orchestra on fragmentation, time and the limits of coherence.

一段音乐能在多大程度上反映我们内心生活或外部世界的动荡和支离破碎的质量？如果作品能做到这一点，它是否也能保持一个令人满意的音乐整体？如果它看起来不完整，它是一个正式的失败，还是一种挑衅性的新表达？我提议的新作品试图通过将碎片构建的音乐形式推向极限来解决这些问题。这些片段之所以听起来像这样，是因为音乐的各个部分停止和开始的方式，以及连续的流动是如何突然破裂的。这也将触及和声语言中的极端演奏的核心，以及风格对比的使用。我还希望讨论作品中的音乐时间问题，特别是我们对音乐中时间的感知如何受到管弦乐织体和乐器分层的影响--就像一个事件如何跟随另一个事件一样。特别是，我想研究是否有可能同时唤起对不止一种时间的感知。与此类似的是，我们的记忆可以同时包含来自我们过去（以及现在）不同时间的不止一个图像。这种探索有一个感性的方面，也有一个正式的方面。但它也有重要的表现力。我把我的音乐看作是“激情”和“沉思”之间的对话。明确关注不同种类（和程度）的音乐时间，它们的并置和分层，将有助于理解这些“极点”如何通过音乐最好地、最有力地被唤起。此外，我将试图揭示这个时间表达的问题是如何与管弦乐声音相互联系的。我在马勒的作品中看到了这方面的先例--他的第一交响曲的开头就是一个有力的例子。同样，我认为托马斯阿德斯的管弦乐偶尔也会探索这样一个领域，他最近的特沃特的结尾就是这样一个例子。但正如我所建议的那样，两人的音乐都没有明确地关注这个问题。除了我的作品在它所包含的主题上闪耀着表现力和形式的光芒之外，我还希望进一步反思我是如何创作这部作品的-在创作过程中，而不仅仅是在创作之后。为此，我将从预创作阶段到作品完成阶段定期写一篇博客，在博客中我将详细介绍我的工作：材料的加工，观念的检验，形式的发展，对直觉与理性建构关系的思考等等。这里的语言有时必然是技术性的，但我也希望以这样一种方式写作，即感兴趣的普通读者将被深深地吸引到我的音乐世界中。

To what extent can a piece of music reflect the turbulence and fragmentary quality of our internal lives or of the external world?If the work can do this, can it also stay a satisfactory musical whole? If it does not seem whole, will it be a formal failure, or instead a provocative, new kind of expression?My proposed new piece seeks to address these issues by pushing a musical form built out of fragments to its limits. The fragments will sound as such because of the way the sections of the music stop and start, how continuous flow will suddenly be ruptured. This will also go to the heart of the play of extremes in the harmonic language, and in the use of stylistic contrast too.I also wish to address the issue of musical time in the piece, and in particular how our perception of time in music may be affected by orchestral texture and instrumental layering - as much as by how one event follows another. In particular I want to investigate if it is possible to evoke the perception of more that one kind of time simultaneously. An analogy to this may be seen in the way our memories can appear to us to contain more than one image from different times in our pasts (as well as our present) at the same time. Such exploration has a perceptive aspect, and a formal one too. But there is also a vital expressive side. I see much of my music as a dialogue between the 'passionate' and the 'contemplative'. An explicit focus on different kinds (and degrees) of musical time, their juxtaposition and their layering, will develop an understanding of how these 'poles' may best and most powerfully be evoked through music. Further I will seek to uncover how this temporal-expressive question interlocks with orchestral sound. I see antecedents for this in the work of Mahler - the opening of his first symphony is a powerful example. Equally I see the orchestral music of Thomas Ades as occasionally exploring such a field, the end of his recent Tevot is one such example. But neither's music puts an explicit focus on the issue as I propose. As well as my piece shining its expressive and formal light on the subjects it contains, I wish further to reflect on how I am making the piece - in the act of composition, and not only after it. To that end I will write a regular blog from the stages of pre-composition to the completion of the piece, in which I will detail my workings: elaboration of materials, testing of ideas, development of form, thinking about the relationship of intuition and rational construction and so forth. The language here will necessarily be technical at times, but I aim too to write in such a way that an interested general reader will be drawn deeply into my musical world.