Harnessing the Musicality of Noise: Formal Grammar in Music Composition

Abstract

Impeded by the pitch and rhythm-oriented bias of conventional approaches to composition, composers seeking to incorporate unpitched or rhythmically ambiguous elements into their artistic work have tended to invent novel ways of thinking about music to facilitate their visions. This thesis unpacks a range of such compositional strategies for organising unpitched and/or rhythmically ambiguous material before interrogating how concepts of grammar borrowed from linguistics might scaffold compositional processes. The woolliness of music and language comparisons is framed as a productive grey area in this thesis, where idiosyncratic concepts of music can be honed for creative purposes regardless of their empirical veracity. In particular, the abstraction and arbitrariness of formal grammar is perceived to offer opportunities – rather than a proscriptive template – for a reimagining of discourse in music composition that is not dependent on pitch or rhythm. These opportunities are considered practically, also in relation to the aesthetic territory and philosophical stakes of creative autonomy they set in play, and in relation to their application in a folio of compositions that has been submitted as the major creative work for this PhD in composition.