Tracing a path


My music is currently tracing and reliving through composition paths that a particular kind of musical culture took between roughly 1400 and 1600. The composers seemed to embrace the abstract beauty of the chant and its potential as an agent of structure in longer-form composition. They placed it at the centre of a new composition, but at the same time obscured it by stretching it out, with long durations for each note. The source chant became symbolic (hidden) rather than overt and representational; which in turn gave space for more ornamental or decorative approaches. The music moved a step further away from vocality and text led expression, and towards shapes and patterns that flow freely, develop, and renounce the chant's origins. This is a process of transformation similar to one described in Remi Chiu's book,* in which the use of triple metre is said to contribute to a sense of earthy, dance-like joy, compared with devotional 'homorhythmic' duple chordal style with which a piece may begin. Learning from Christopher Tye, my next piece will attempt to use the "in nomine" chant tune as the anchor point of the composition, bridging a change from standard duple to the ecstatic rhythms of triple metre.

*Plague and Music in the Renaissance (CUP, 2017)

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