Projects in Cross-Cultural Music Composition

Abstract

The creation of music cross-culturally is a rich, cutting-edge field in contemporary music studies. This thesis examines the practice of cross-cultural music composition through the lens of the tradition of Western art music and my own perspective as a composer representing that tradition. This portfolio comprises original compositions for various musical instrumentations including Indonesian gamelan and Chinese yangqin, and which utilise a range of technical and contextual approaches that are described in the thesis. Reference is made to historic precedents (mainly twentieth-century) including a case study of one composer (Lou Harrison), in order to give a context to my own work and musical thinking.