Sound and space: music for organ and electronics

This research explores creative, interpretative and listening processes in ‘open notation’ music for organ and electronics, using Nicholas Bourriaud’s concept of the ‘journey form’ (2010) as a theoretical lens. It pursues an understanding of these processes as iterative practices that articulate separate, but equal, aspects of a single process, and as such postulates a way of considering the ontology of the work as one that finds its expression in the multiplicity of the work in performance. The researcher has explored the genre of organ and electronics through recent works, several specifically commissioned for the project, and through comparison of performance in a number of spaces throughout the UK as part of a national tour. Her specific relationship with these works, and with multiple performance spaces through them, has offered the material for reflection in deriving the conclusions of the work. The research considers the performance space as embodied by the performer as an extension of her instrument, and explores organ performance as a site-specific practice that interacts with the instrument and space through the medium of notation. In the case of each of the pieces, the project works towards a ‘work-specific performance practice’ (Kanga, 2015) as a way of articulating this relationship through the performance of individual works. The goal of this research was not a set of ‘finished’ performances but a way of articulating the expression of the process of a work and the performance as a part of its articulation.

The research is expressed through a portfolio of related work: a concert tour, which expresses the processes of the research, a CD recording which documents single expressions of each of the pieces at the end of these processes, and a book chapter that explores the theoretical implications of the research. Further, supporting documentation is offered as a complete record of the processes of the research.