Expanded Percussion Notation in Recent Works by Cat Hope, Stuart James and Lindsay Vickery

Abstract

This paper discusses the percussion notation of Western Australian composers Lindsay Vickery, Stuart James and Cat Hope. Both the compositional and performative aspects of their notational conventions are considered in the diverse approaches they take to the specification of timbre, improvisation, and ensemble coordination. The design and interpretation of screen-based technologies, tablature gestural approaches and spectrographic notation is explored using Lindsay Vickery’s The Miracle of the Rose (2015) InterXection (2002) and Lyrebird (2014), Cat Hope’s Broken Approach (2014), Sub Aerial (2015), and Tone Being (2016) and Stuart James’ Kinabuhi | Kamatayon (2015) as case studies.

Keywords:

• Notation
• Percussion
• Gestural Notation
• Tablature
• Screen Score
• Musical Co-ordination

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the support of Australia Council for financial assistance in commissioning Broken Approach; the Department of Culture and the Arts for financial assistance in commissioning Kinabuhi | Kamatayon, Tone Being and Sub Aerial.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Lindsay Vickery’s music includes works for acoustic and electronic instruments in interactive-electronic, improvised or fully notated settings, ranging from solo pieces to opera and has been commissioned by numerous groups for concert, dance and theatre. He was a founding member of Alea New Music Ensemble (1987–1992), Magnetic Pig (1992–2003), HEDKIKR (2002–), Decibel (2009–) and GreyWing (2016–) and has toured as a soloist and with ensembles in festivals through Australia, Asia, Europe and the United States. He is active as a lecturer, writer and critic and is a regular contributor to international journals and conferences. His research interests are in fields of Screenscores, Eye-movement tracking, Interactive Music and Non-Linear Formal Structures. He is currently coordinator of the Composition and Music Technology Program at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University.

Louise Devenish is a Perth-based percussionist whose practice incorporates performance, directing, research and education. Her work with contemporary, world and interdisciplinary ensembles includes co-directing percussion duo The Sound Collectors, directing Piñata Percussion, percussing for electro-acoustic sextet Decibel and curating the annual Day of Percussion, a full-day event exploring percussion via performances and workshops. Louise works regularly with Speak Percussion (Vic) as a percussionist and contributor to Sounds Unheard. An advocate of Australian music, Louise has commissioned over 40 percussion works and has recently completed a Doctor of Musical Arts researching the development of Australian contemporary percussion music, which culminated in the show Australian Music for One Percussionist. In 2012, she studied at the University of California San Diego with Steven Schick. Louise is Head of Percussion at the University of Western Australia School of Music, where she also teaches world music and musicology, and lecturer for the acting and music departments at WA Academy of Performing Arts. Her research is published in Musicology Australia, Resonate, Percussive Notes and PERCUSscene.

Stuart James is a composer, sound artist, percussionist and academic based in Perth, Western Australia. His works have been performed nationally and internationally and he has been commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Decibel New Music Ensemble, Tetrafide Ensemble, the WASO New Music Ensemble, percussionist Louise Devenish, and visual artist Erin Coates. Stuart's current work reflects a diversity of composition practice ranging from acoustic and electroacoustic concert music, acousmatic music, spatial music, electronic music and production, AV and multimedia installation, interactive systems, and computer programming. Stuart teaches in the Composition and Music Technology stream of the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and has been diversifying his own research in the areas of music analysis, sound synthesis, interactive systems, sound spatialisation, psychoacoustics and perception theory, music notation and digital score delivery, and historiographical research.

Cat Hope is an academic with an active profile as a composer, sound artist and musician. She is the director of the award-winning new music ensemble Decibel and has toured internationally. Her composition and performance practices explore the physicality of sound in different media, and has been discussed in books such as Loading the Silence (Kouvaris, 2013), Women of Note (Appleby, 2012), Sounding Postmodernism (Bennett, 2011) as well as periodicals such as The Wire (UK, 2013), Limelight (Aus, 2012) and Neu Zeitschrift Fur Musik Shaft (Ger, 2012). Her compositions have been recorded for Australian, German and Austrian national radio, and her work has been awarded a range of prizes including the APRA|AMC Award for Excellence in Experimental Music in 2011, 2014 and the Peggy Glanville Hicks residency in 2014. She is a Churchill and Civitella Ranieri Fellow, and has been resident at the Visby International Composers Centre in Sweden. She has collaborated with Australian visual artists such as Tracey Moffat, Kate McMillan, Erin Coates, and Tina Havelock-Stevens and has written work for the London Improvisers Orchestra amongst others. Cat Hope is the co-author of ‘Digital Arts – an Introduction to New Media’ on Bloomsbury Academic and was the lead CI on the ARC-funded ‘Western Australian New Music Archive’ with the State Library of Western Australia, Tura new music and ABC Classic FM. Her research encompasses digital archiving, graphic and digital notation, low-frequency sound, and Australian music. She is a member of the Australian Research Council’s ‘College of Experts’. In 2017, she was appointed Head of the Sir Zelman Cowan School of Music at Monash University.