Abstracting Concrete Materials: Contemporary Poetry as a Musical Source

Authors

  • Rachel Walker Künstlerhof Schreyahn, Germany Author

Keywords:

Music, Composition, Contemporary music, Contemporary Poetry, Lectures, Translation

Abstract

This article summarizes a few ideas shared during lectures delivered at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Shenzhen and the Academy of Music at Hong Kong Baptist University in March 2024. Although there are existing publications focusing on my research in China and other projects as a composer working within the field of contemporary music composition, this focuses primarily on my musical output and research since coming to Germany five years ago, exploring contemporary poetry as a source of abstract musical thought. This brief explanation thus focuses on the technical and notational solutions which I have developed through interacting with poetry recitation, transcription and their derived parameters, as well as my goals behind this approach. I will first provide some general context, before moving on to musical strategies used in recent compositions based on texts by the Chinese poet Ruan Xuefang and the Iraqi poet Nadeem Al-Aloosi.

Author Biography

  • Rachel Walker, Künstlerhof Schreyahn, Germany
    Rachel C. Walker writes poetic, timbre-sensitive works drawing from her ongoing immersion in and research on Chinese folk music, musical time, and language. She engages in long-term collaborations with living writers, exploring the philosophical connections between transcription and translation within abstract musical syntaxes.    Her music has been performed internationally during Festival Mujeres en la Música Nueva, Kuandu Arts Festival, Svensk Musikvår,  Sound of Stockholm, Warsaw Autumn, Festival de Royaumont, Beethovenfest Bonn, Unerhörte Musik, Sommer in Stuttgart, et al. Rachel has held residencies at the Banff Centre, Britten-Pears Arts and the Elektronmusik Studion Stockholm, as well as fellowships from Akademie Schloss Solitude, the Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen and Künstlerhof Schreyahn. 
Music. Multimedia. Culture

Published

2024-06-17

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2024): Music. Multimedia. Culture

Section

Culture