Morrison, Pádruig John Parry (2023) Finding a Contemporary Voice for Gaelic Art Music in Scotland. PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.

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Abstract

The confluence of Scottish traditional music with contemporary composition is a field of limited discussion in academic literature despite the increasing interest evident in performance repertoire and recorded media. This particular confluence is explored in the research below through a portfolio of new works for various forces with accompanying contextualisation and commentaries. The contextualisation will build on the research of John Purser, who traces the developments of both traditional and classical music until the end of the twentieth century and whose research unearthed the pioneering compositional synthesis in the music of Erik Chisholm, by addressing the lacuna that exists in understanding the integration of traditional music with contemporary composition in works from the past half-century. By surveying scores from within that period, the emergent devices frequently used by composers will be identified. These trends (pibroch, Gaelic psalm singing, and ornamentation) will be evaluated by drawing autoethnographically on the author’s intimate knowledge of traditional music, subsequently applied in four new compositions. The survey will also inform the author’s personal critical stance to compositional investigation by understanding the existing means of achieving such a synthesis. New compositional works will then be presented which develop a musical confluence using original approaches – thus providing the potential for much fruitful work in future. Autoethnographic reflection is also employed in the development of new approaches to notating idiomatic gestures such as ornamentation, metre, and phrasing. This work will culminate in three umbrella works which synthesise original, autoethnographically informed material with new-found compositional approaches established over the course of this research.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Keywords:	Contemporary Voice; Gaelic Art Music; Scotland;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Arts & Humanities > Music
Item ID:	18142
Depositing User:	IR eTheses
Date Deposited:	13 Feb 2024 15:51
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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