Doubles and Duplication: A Study of their Application as Musical Materials and Compositional Devices - Mirrors, Still Lifes, Echoes, Displacements

The submitted portfolio and accompanying thesis focus on the subject of doubles and duplication and their application as musical materials and compositional devices in my own work and, to a lesser extent, throughout the history of music and other artistic disciplines. In this study I look at the acoustic, structural, perceptual and aesthetic implications derived from the duplication of sonic materials, instruments, objects, setups, gestures and performers.

From a general perspective, the use of duplication raises a number of issues of identical sounds by two or more sonic sources, the importance of synchronicity or asynchronicity in the suggestion of aural and visual analogies, the role of distance in the establishment of auditory correspondences, the degree of similarity required by specific materials to be identified as doubles, the role of the performer in creating a sense of gestural and performative duplication, the relationship between acoustic and acousmatic sources in the delineation of sonic parallels, etc.

In this thesis, the subject of duplication is chiefly regarded from spatial, performative and sonic perspectives. The sections focusing on spatial issues examine the function of duplicated setups of objects and instruments in the space of performance. The analysis of performative elements addresses the role of gestural duplication and doppelgangers as musical and scenic resources. Finally, the sections on sound investigate the perceptual and aesthetic effects of duplicated sonic sources, echoic interactions and sonic displacements. This thesis is structured into two main parts. The first part (chapters 1 & 2) examines the different possible categories and models of duplication and their usage throughout music history. The second part (chapters 3 & 4) focuses on the application and different roles of duplication in my own music.

The issue of duplication has been explored in the works composed throughout the research process. A total of six pieces (approximately 105 minutes of music) have been written over the course of this PhD. The issues present in these compositions have been thoroughly examined in my thesis, becoming the main object of study. Each of these works approaches duplication in a different manner, highlighting the versatility and potential compositional applications of this phenomenon.