Author: Roger Marsh

A cisgender, heterosexual gaze is prevalent in Western art music. It is ingrained in our academia, and almost unquestioningly accepted in composition, performance, and listening practices. It extends into other arts and academic disciplines, and into all areas of life (this last point should, hopefully, surprise no-one). Sadly, even when the topic of ‘queerness’ is […]

    The fifth piece in La Monte Young’s Composition 1960 collection begins by instructing a performer to ‘Turn a butterfly (or any number of butterflies) loose in the performance area’. The piece was composed while journeying through the mountains of North California, as Young considered the humble Insecta–Lepidoptera. ‘Alone, it made a very beautiful […]

by David Power David Power is a former PhD student.  His latest project is the CD ‘A Hundred Years of British Piano Miniatures’ which goes on worldwide release on the Naxos Grand Piano label on Friday 12th October 2018 and includes his own ‘Eight Miniatures from the late 1990’s. Full details here – https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=GP789   […]

  The problem underlying all the articles in this series on Words and Music is this:  music needs words more than words need music.  Why is this a problem?  Well, most of the time it isn’t.  Composers have their ways of finding or creating the words for their music, and it’s up to the listener […]

This blog describes a short film carried out in a collaborative project between Roger Marsh, Carmen Troncoso and Lynette Quek With thanks to Patrick Wildgust and Chris Pearson, from Shandy Hall. You may have visited or heard about ‘Shandy Hall’…  in the village of Coxwold on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors? Well, I […]

The Proms; a gleaming jewel in the crown of the BBC, and indeed the classical music culture of the UK and worldwide. An institution that deserves sincere respect, and deep, reverent admiration.   It was, then, with some surprise that I was asked at the start of this year’s season to create a one-hour radiophonic […]

One of Japan’s biggest pop culture idols for over a decade, Hatsune Miku’s synthesised voice and image have been used on hundreds of thousands pop tracks, videos, and franchised products worldwide. Powered by Yamaha’s Vocaloid software, she represents the ultimate hyper-idol, a digitally rendered eternal bubblegum teen star. Originally intended as just a cannily marketed […]

The 2018 Spring forum was held on 14th March in the “Treehouse”, Humanities Research Centre. In this new environment, there were presentations from people early on in their research as well as those close to submission. The range of topics demonstrated the impact and significance of music beyond the department walls. First up was in-coming […]

  Composed for Solo Television performer, and incorporating bath tubs, kettles, mechanical fish, and a grand piano, a remarkable recording exists of Cage’s ‘Water Walk’, given by the man himself on the 1960s American panel show ‘I’ve Got a Secret’.  It’s an absurd scene, made all the more surreal through the postponement of the game-show […]

  Last week, the Proms announced that by 2022, 50% of new commissions will go to women (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/26/bbc-proms-give-half-new-commissions-women-2022/).  This is part of the PRSF’s Keychange initiative, and 45 other UK festivals have made pledges along similar lines. Predictably, not everyone is happy, though this Telegraph headline is perhaps overstating things: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/01/bbc-proms-backlash-gender-balance-will-see-fading-opportunities/ The argument I’ve heard most […]

As tributes pour in for the legendary South African trumpeter, vocalist, composer and arranger uBab’uHugh Ramopolo Masekela, the world reflects on his global contribution to music, his role in the anti-apartheid movement, and his advocacy for civil rights and heritage restoration in Africa. During a recording career spanning 60 years he reached audiences worldwide with […]

Mementos   [originally written for Aurora Orchestra blog] but see the mud is on our shoulders Edoardo Sanguineti … No listener, no performer, no composer can escape their personal musical histories and engage an ‘innocent ear’.  We hear through a bespoke hall of mirrors that transforms fluctuating air pressure into something rich and meaningful. We […]

It was Bernard Rands, my composition teacher, who in 1971 introduced my family to the Italian aperitif Punt e Mes, a dark vermouth with a slightly bitter taste.  It became a favourite in our house for a few years, and a kind of family secret because in London at that time (and still today) it was not a well-known drink.  At the start of our relationship in the late eighties, Anna (now my wife) and I, rediscovered Punt e Mes and would always have a bottle in the house.  When in 1987 I was asked to take part in a live radio chat during the interval of a BBC concert which included the London premiere of Berio’s orchestral work Formazioni, I asked Anna to give me a word or phrase to slip into the discussion as a secret message across the airwaves: something challenging.  Yes I was that unprofessional.  Anna immediately suggested ‘Punt e Mes’.

The Autumn 2017 Postgraduate Forum is intended as a welcome to newcomers and a showcase of research by current students. The event reflected the current multifaceted nature of research in Music. Unity was found in this diversity in that so many ideas were concerned with bridging certain boundaries of discipline, venue, musical technique or the […]

Memory is the subject of this year’s BBC Radio 3 / Wellcome Collection mini festival, “Why Music?”.  I recall as a young violinist that music seemed to embed itself in my fingers so that I never needed to learn to memorise, and never worried that I might forget in performance.  Fast-forward a couple of decades (ok maybe a few decades) and I’m looping the first four bars of one of Kurtág’s Signs Games and Messages, desperately trying to alight on the correct continuation in the second phrase and wondering how many times I can get away with the repetition before anyone notices.

  I live in earshot of Heslington Hall. At night, I hear   the clock strike the hours. They have replaced the gears and the bell;   now it’s synthesized. I no longer imagine or hear   whirs, clanks, gaps, errors. It’s all correct, uniform, pleasant.   ***   I think: this is not how […]

  The spectre of Nazism has surfaced this summer in the USA (Land of the Free). It has been troubling to see Nazi flags flying and armed, uniformed Nationalists marching on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia.  It has given rise to some debate on social media about the appropriate response to this growing phenomenon.  In […]

Isang Yun Remembered Postlude I: Music and Politics (Music by Isang Yun and Roger Marsh) Recently I organized and performed a concert entitled Isang Yun Remembered (June 6th NCEM), focusing on the relationship between Yun’s music and his political/cultural experience. The concert prompted me to reflect further, and this blog explores some of my thoughts […]

A report from Lynette Quek PhD in Audiovisual Composition and Carmen Troncoso PhD in Performance   On Wednesday 10th May we showcased our collaborative piece “ Recordeur  I-II ” within the framework of Sound & Thought at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Scotland.  Sound Thought (Festival of Music and Sound Research, Composition and […]

The First Young Musicologists and Ethnomusicologists International Conference (YMEIC) – was held at Tor Vergata University in Rome on 27^th-28^th April, and featured three papers by PhD researchers from the York Music Department.

I have been working exclusively with toy instruments for almost a year now, although the title of this post perhaps implies a degree of severity and gravity in this exploration, which, in reality, was never intended, nor ever materialised.

Postgraduate forum, Autumn 2016 2016’s autumn postgraduate forum – 28th September, in the Music Research Centre – showcased a typically diverse range of talents, tastes, specialisms and perspectives. The forum also featured, for the first time, a poster competition – giving students the opportunity to share ideas and progress in a different format and broadening […]