Portfolio of music compositions

Efstathiou, D

Abstract

The following pages form a commentary on my own thoughts, notes, sketches and final printed texts of six pieces written between 2009 and 2013. The purpose of the text is twofold: to inform the reader of the intentions and poetic impulses of the composer and to make an accompanying statement for a researcher or musicologist who might attempt an actual analysis of the pieces. It is not, in my view, the work of a composer to self-analyze the extensively or to deconstruct the entities that are represented by finished compositions. However, the commentary itself is a reflection of the music – a personal account of what was important during the creative stages of ‘inventing’ a music the very essence of my thoughts during the period when I composed the music. In that it is, unquestionably, the most complete, appropriate and succinct account the composer might offer, regarding the thoughts behind the sounds.

From a technical point of view, the methods I used for the compositions in this portfolio range from using scalar formations and basic techniques such as inversions, permutations, augmentations or diminutions of materials all the way to more abstract methods of organising sound, whereby the choice of register, for example, is the outcome of a correspondence with an extra-musical narrative.

The structure of my commentary is that of a sonata, with this abstract being the motif. After an introduction (Nostalgia – ‘what is silence?’), I start out with a triple exposition (Regeneration – Ordinatio – Nos dec), continue with a development (Exelixis, meaning literally ‘development’) and finish off with a recapitulation (Quantum, where the themes of the exposition and the recapitulation meet). The coda is a resounding ‘confession’ that if little has been achieved, much has been questioned in the process. Why the sonata form? A commentary on certain structures ought to be structured in an opposite way.

Citation

Efstathiou, D. Portfolio of music compositions. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jun 28, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 28, 2014
• Award Date: Jan 21, 2014