Quick Search:

Selection 44: The ancient art of Remixing: Exploration of the use of existing music in new compositions and developing new compositional techniques through practice and reflection

Wilsmore, Robert ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1584-6239 (2004) Selection 44: The ancient art of Remixing: Exploration of the use of existing music in new compositions and developing new compositional techniques through practice and reflection. [Composition]

Item Type: Composition
Creators: Wilsmore, Robert
Abstract:

The commission from Lakeside Arts and Viva, the orchestra of the East Midlands, set the brief to respond to the other works in the programme. Viva is the only professional orchestra within the region and Lakeside Arts are committed to commissioning new works, the Bright Lights series (of which this commission was a part) promoted young professional international virtuosos, the music of Mark Anthony Turnage and professional composers connected to the region. In a continuation of previous research, the work explored modern compositional techniques involved in popular dance composition in an acoustic context. The work uses only music from the Presto of Haydn’s symphony No.44 (Trauer), its authorship is acknowledged as ‘by Haydn, remixed by Robert Wilsmore’. ‘Selection 44’, alongside previous pieces that use work of other composers, led to a realisation of defined and shared compositional methodologies employed across genres and across millenia. Modern sampling is employed in a variety of ways that share common ground with, for example, medievel practices of cantus firmus and motetus devices where intertextual relationships are a predominant factor. This work explored one particular intertextual approach to composition. A recording of the movement was sampled bar by bar and remixed on a sequencer, as if it were a (night club) dance piece, and then transcribed back to score for acoustic performance by the orchestra. Bars were repeated and placed in a new order but with a sense of the traditional harmonic syntax (functional classical tonality) intact. The work uses a third of the original material but is a third longer and its ternary structure locates the work in G Major as opposed to the original Trauer E minor.

Date: 22 April 2004
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN2000 Dramatic representation. The Theatre
School/Department: School of the Arts
URI: https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/188

University Staff: Request a correction | RaY Editors: Update this record