From landscape to music notation : a thesis that depicts my compositional practice

Abstract

The intention of my work is to express in a musical composition a created poetic link between what I see, hear and feel in a chosen natural environment. I define my creative process of composing as a flexible approach based one landscapes which become the source of chosen musical parameters. This approach is stepped and contains multiple different perceptions of untouched nature. In the works under consideration I used landscapes as the inspirational groundwork that guided me through the process of writing music. I researched man’s relationship with the wilderness through the ages which brought to me awareness of the evolution of that relationship and cultural associations which might shape my own understanding. To counterbalance my subjective and possibly romantic feelings I relied on geologic and geographic facts of the landscape under study. To translate a landscape into music notation, I developed a work method consisting of exploration of that very landscape through field work and cartography thus gathering material and data for use in the composition. I extracted an abstract representation of unspoiled nature of that very landscape and created from it a time progression for a piece with structural events. Since nature does not contain musical information but has soundscapes, I have relied on informed intuition and maid aesthetic choices to produce the music. I have developed my music language through techniques and articulations of orchestrations with a special intention to research textures and developed timbre. I have also built on the concept of a zoom-in process that Tristan Murail and Kaija Saariaho have presented in their works. This thesis brings forward examples of my works on landscapes which become the core of my discussion: the ensemble piece Fell, the orchestral work Rift and the Violin Concerto Sceadu.

Sceadu, fyrir fiðlu og kammersveit.Sceadu er hluti af rannsókn minni á landslagi og yfirfærslu þess í tónmál. Þungamiðja verksins er sambandið milli tveggja sjónarhorna á landslagið, milli fjarlægðar og nálægðar. Þessi tvö sjónarhorn endurspeglast í tónlistinni í tveimur aðskildum hlutverkum; einleiksfiðlan túlkar nálægðina en kamersveitin fjarlægðina í landslaginu.