Butterfly modernism : composing with non-musical mathematics of architecture, East Asian aesthetics, and Steiner spirituality

Abstract

The purpose of the exegesis is to explain the space-time sensibility and an inner listening process that lies behind my creative process and its six scores. Its focus is a discussion of how my compositional space-time sensibility encountered three aesthetic aspects, of non-musical coastal architectural mathematics, East Asian aesthetics and Steiner spirituality, that together had a revitalizing effect that propelled my work towards a new genesis. I argue that implementing a three-pronged approach of incorporating the non-musical mathematics of architecture, East Asian spatial aesthetics and Steiner spirituality into my music creates oku inner space sonically. The structure of the exegesis commences with a compositional Credo to a cultural Journey to an Analysis. The Credo outlines my Steiner spirituality and Christian ethos through metaphor, a description of a mediation process and a spiritual fingerprint of eight dimensional concepts that pervade my work. The Journey describes the development of an Australian space and time sensibility that was developed and broadened through an interaction with the Asia-Pacific region for more than twenty years, in which I experienced resonances with key composers from Japan, Korea, the Philippines and New Zealand. The Analysis describes how I have operated from the aesthetic perspective of a 'butterfly modernist'; through applying a space-time sensibility and an inner listening process with three interactive dimensions. In this, my inner listening intuitively guided the processing of these elements within the fuzzy realm of my creative psychological space towards a reinvigoration of my compositional practice. The PDF attachment also includes the following compositions: The Aspern Papers (2015), Sydney Opera House (2012), Deep in Summer (2016), The Banquet of Cleopatra (2014), In a Corner of the MacIntyre (2014), Stars (2016), Sydney Opera House (2016), The Aspern Papers - Chamber Version Selections (2016).

Date of Award	2017
Original language	English