ResearchWorks: Composing Narratives: Reimagining Musical Storytelling in New Vocal and Instrumental Works

Speaker: Matthew Kaner (Guildhall School of Music & Drama)

This presentation will explore Matthew's ongoing research into musical narrativity in a variety of projects, including my 2018 collaboration with Simon Armitage, Hansel and Gretel: A Nightmare in Eight Scenes for narrator and ensemble, and a selection of instrumental works that were conceived as “musical narratives”, drawing on the theoretical work of Almén, Hatten, Klein, Reyland and others.

The research has been documented using an autoethnographic or “self-narrative” model, in order to capture the “ephemeral aspects of the creative process—which are precisely the kinds of knowledge that only creative practitioners can provide” (Leedham and Scheuregger 2018). As such, it is concerned both with storytelling through composition, and at the same time, the stories that we, as composers, tell about the act of composing itself.