Cat Hope

The Rise and Fall, and the Rise (Again) of Feminist Research in Music: ‘What Goes Around Comes Around’

This article reports from a two-phase study that involved an analysis of the extant literature followed by a three-part survey answered by seventy-one women composers. Through these theoretical and empirical data, the authors explore the relationship between gender and music’s symbolic and cultural capital. Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus is employed to understand the gendered experiences of the female composers who participated in the survey. The article suggests that these female composers have different investments in gender but that, overall, they reinforce the male habitus given that the female habitus occupies a subordinate position in relation to that of the male. The findings of the study also suggest a connection between contemporary feminism and the attitudes towards gender held by the participants. The article concludes that female composers classify themselves, and others, according to gendered norms and that these perpetuate the social order in music in which the male norm dominates.

What is new, here? Locating an art form within the Western Australian New Music Archive

Abstract The Western Australian New Music Archive seeks to collect documentation of art music activity from Western Australia from 1970 to the present, with the collection materials being made accessible online via a public web portal. Seeking to archive, compile and curate a collection based solely around a particular musical community has required a number of questions to be posed around what actually constitutes new music practice, and specifically, what this practice looks (and sounds) like in the context of Western Australia as the home to the community being represented by this collection. These questions have been answered in part by analysing the collection items themselves, but also through identifying the primary roles of each of the project partners. Tura New Music and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation have contributed content to the collection and the web portal, respectively. Edith Cowan University has had a long tradition of composition and music technology students and staff who have contributed to this community, and leads the research. Finally, as collecting institutions the State Library of Western Australia and the National Library of Australia will retain and provide access to collection materials. Nonetheless, a sufficiently layered and complete analysis of what constitutes new music, and how Western Australian new music practice can be identified, are only possible through analysis of the collection items that is also informed by collection development and its relationship to discourses of art and academia.

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

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.

Wording New Paths: Text-Based Notation in New Solo Percussion Works by Natasha Anderson, Erik Griswold, and Vanessa Tomlinson

New music compositions for percussion continue to embrace a wide range of musical idioms, performance approaches, and technologies associated with contemporary music making. Text scores have had an important role to play in percussion works where rhythmic structures are not a central concern, or where a significant amount of improvisation is required, but also in works that feature electronic parts. Percussion music has tested the capacity of traditional notation to represent a broad range of new ideas, and text, alongside graphic notation, offers an alternative possibility for composers designing new sound worlds for percussion. Building on early examples of text scores by composers such as Alvin Lucier, Tom Johnson, Pauline Oliveros, and Yoko Ono, this paper examines three recent Australian works that engage text as the principal aspect of the score, with reference to their premiere performances by Australian percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson. The works composed are by Tomlinson, Natasha Anderson, and Erik Griswold.