Embracing Multiplicity: Harnessing Performers’ Perceptions to Instigate Emergent Forms

Notions of multiplicity have become an ever increasing part of my compositional approach, both theoretically and practically. This thesis seeks to set out how my music has come to embrace ideas of multiplicity, and what that means for my music from a theoretical standpoint. The music employs modular forms (which are defined in relation to the work of James Saunders and Matthew Sergeant) that allow performers to create their own versions of a piece, through their understanding of material identity. The implications of this process on the composer/score/performer relationship are profound, indeed one can see the forms that each version of a piece takes as emergent. Each version of a piece emerges from the dialogue and mediation implicit in this kind of composer/score/performer relationship. The emergent form of the piece is thus a realisation of just one of the multiplicity of potential versions of the piece there are. I also seek to characterise this composer/score/performer relationship in relation to Bakhtinian dialogism, Sergeant’s notions of hybridity and McCormack’s theory of mediation. Each of these theories have been applied retrospectively to the works within the folio, these resultant axioms provide new insights into this composer/score/performer relationship, which have informed further investigations.