https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/21909 2026-06-10T10:30:07Z 2026-06-10T10:30:07Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/25014 2018-01-22T13:35:26Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Music, continuity and change in the Maltese wind band tradition Abstract: Wind band music is one of the most popular music traditions in Malta. In almost every Maltese town and village one finds one or two, sometimes even three, band clubs with their own premises, paying members and a band affiliated to them. The highlight of the year for band music is the village feast (festa) – the week-long festivities in honour of the village patron or secondary saint. This dissertation will investigate aspects of continuity and change in the Maltese wind band tradition with special attention to how this tradition has adjusted itself to current trends in Maltese culture and society. For this purpose, the present study will rely on the theories and methods of ethnomusicology. The work consists of an Introduction, five chapters and Conclusion. The Introduction presents the wind band tradition in Malta, the clubs that bands are affiliated to, as well as the typical structure of Maltese towns and villages. The same chapter will show how these wind bands and their respective clubs fit into the social and cultural life of the locality. Chapter one focuses on a historical overview of the Maltese wind band tradition. It presents the process by which Maltese wind bands flourished during the nineteenth century and evolved in various ways during the years that followed. Chapter two explores the band club (każin) from three aspects: (1) the band club as a physical space which hosts both musical and non-musical events; (2) the band club as a community of people that values the banda tradition and the contribution of their club to the social and cultural life of the town/village; (3) the band club as the producer of music both for the village feast as well as for other events. In all the three aspects one notes a very nice balance between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’. Chapter three analyses the Maltese festive band march with special attention to how this changed over the years whilst preserving its identity. Such discussion will incorporate a range of extra-musical processes that place the music of these marches into a better perspective. Chapter four examines the interrelationship of the Maltese wind band tradition and partisan politics in Malta. This link has existed since the beginning of the Maltese wind band tradition. The chapter will also show how this interrelationship has evolved over the years to reflect ongoing propagandistic intentions and strategies. Chapter five explores the role of the recording industry in the recording of Maltese marches. The chapter will show the impact of recordings on the appraisal of Maltese marches and how recording practices of the past can still be observed in today’s banda tradition. The conclusion will bring together and summarise the main points of the overall discussion while pointing out aspects of the tradition of our concern that require further research. Description: M.MUSIC

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/24657 2017-12-14T10:14:46Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: A composition portfolio beyond communication : an islander’s perspective Abstract: The portfolio presents four highly contrasted works written in the following order along the years 2010-16: Roma Lavrentio, Entrückung, Nidi nel Campanile and Garigue. These four works display a mosaic of intuitions and worldviews emerging from and fused in the same consciousness. The acknowledgement of the roots as an island composer to which I have been exposed throughout my musical career, are part of my compositional DNA. Rhapsodic materials recur with varying degrees of abstraction that are specifically topographical especially in Garigue, a ‘rapsodia concertante’ for violoncello and orchestra depicting the austere garigue insular habitat throughout the year. The other composition Nidi nel Campanile is a work that experiments with acoustic and electronic media, where the music is nested through the motifs that resemble largely dissipative structures, but which are in fact compound re-structurings that spell the exact etymology of the Latin transitive verb ‘componere’ – to put together, to compile, to organise. This work for flute is counterpointed against the manipulated sound of the big bell in the Maltese harbour city of Cospicua. It explores also the idea of migratory patterns that characterise an island status. The other composition Entrückung, a ‘Handlung’ (transaction) for big orchestra flirts with the potentialities of colourful rhythmic outbursts designed to induce the listener into a euphoric state of an ever-increasing spiral of unexpected chromatic twists. The transactional treatment of compositional material with flashes of heart-throbbing rhythmic punches so typical of the Mediterranean passionate character, strikes an emotionally saturated attribute that is provocatively rapturous. On the other end is Roma Lavrentio, a work designed to fit local consumption and thus cast in a very accessible idiom. This extended work employs a purposeful use of ‘traditional tonality’ that can also serve as an efficacious compositional tool within a template of pragmatic strategies. This has been my reaction to localised models of receptiveness, schematically gearing an almost film-music model to help the audience visualise the text. It is music for the sake of itself, untouched by fashions or isms, happy to take its chances, re-consummating the language of tonality, harmony and modulations, earthy more than universal. The score evokes the grandness of mighty Rome and portrays episodes from the life of the archdeacon of Rome Laurence, martyred under the reign of Emperor Valerian in 258 AD. Roma Lavrentio possesses pages of suave moods and spiritual tranquillity that subsequently switch with others of sheer brassy power and above all, one that seeks to transmit the terrors of Roman persecution. It is a work that essentially circumscribes my spiritual convictions, whilst revealing at the same time an intriguing collaboration between a small island composer and the upper echelons of a highly influential ecclesiastical institution bent on propagating heroic models of the Catholic faith. This work evolves in a delicate balance that reconciles my musical language and its idiomatic features with the conservative musical expectations of its envisaged patrons as the consumers of the work, without compromising artistic utterance. All the components of this portfolio have one basic ingredient: musical communication, where the composer’s consciousness is relayed directly to the performers through the physical realization of the vigorously subjective blueprints of his music. This becomes the functional and metaphorical medium through which the ultimate recipients, the listeners, are provided with sensory experiences that in some way or other partake of the composer’s states of mind that helped shape his creative output as an islander. After all a composer is a communicator by aspiration. Leaving communication out of the sketch of the composer’s intention would spell indifference resulting in the dismantling of the musical experience and the socio-cultural processes that generate such communication. Description: D.MUS.

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/24410 2020-01-07T08:37:59Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Tragedy and tragic expressions in C21 postdramatic theatre contexts Abstract: It is a widely accepted notion that we inhabit a postdramatic age whereby the importance of the dramatic within tragic modes has been questioned and problematised. Aristotelian criteria and its cumulative dramatic heritage, no longer seems to exert an influence or act as a ‘regulating principle’ in performance today (Lehmann 2006: 22). The common ground that seems to have brought this change in performance is society’s dependence on media and what Guy Debord defines as ‘the society of spectacle’ (1983: 3). Hans-Thies Lehmann’s recent work on tragedy and dramatic elements of theatre and performance repositions contemporary performance as a conglomerate that includes both dramatic and postdramatic elements (2016: 3–4). Lehmann posits that parameters need to be asserted ‘between predramatic, dramatic and postdramatic’ to access the ‘authentically tragic experience’ (4). This research will attempt to question the purpose of such distinct categories and will posit that the dramatic elements that inform tragedy still retain their original form. If this argument is true, therefore, the tragic continuum has not been broken. In addition to addressing this continuation, this study will question whether the tragic form changed to such an extent that it warrants a new definition following the postdramatic paradigm. Through the exploration of contemporary tragedy, it is hoped that these categorical aspects of form can be blurred to heighten the evolutionary nature of society and its relation to the tragic form. Selected work from Penelope Skinner and Philip Ridley will assist in answering the question whether social parameters, through which tragedy is perceived today, has truly evolved beyond recognition. By applying traditional (historic) modes of analysis with the consciousness of new interdisciplinary paradigms, it will be argued that one can attempt the approximation of some level truth, or tragic authenticity, relevant to the contemporary condition. Description: M.A.THEATRE&PERFORMANCE

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/24399 2018-06-11T11:07:45Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Changing sonic experiences : sound and soundscapes in contemporary theatre Abstract: Over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, sound and soundscapes have changed as our daily environments developed in line with the zeitgeist of the time – one that began to value the concept of individual experience. The awareness of sound and soundscapes in daily life as an orchestration is reflected in artists’ compositional soundscapes in performance. The changing sonic experiences have evolved in theatre through the actor’s work and increasingly through the digital work of the sound designer. The separation of the body from the voice has created an awareness of sounds and images as separate elements, as the telephone, gramophone, and cinema transmit acousmatic sounds, i.e. unseen sounds, through loudspeakers, microphones and headphones. Digital technology complicates and impacts the experience of sound, altering its spatial location as sound is heard as acoustic imaginary. In investigating this phenomenon, Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophy on listening is applied to examine the interaction between daily life and artists’ work, since it is grounded on the fact that through sound, resonance generates inference and kinaesthetic sensations as the body positions itself to listen. From a historical perspective, the search for sonic experience is considered through three artists’ work, namely: playwright Anton Chekhov’s breaking string effect in The Cherry Orchard; visionary Antonin Artaud’s idea for a theatre based on interweaving sound and gestures; and practitioner Jerzy Grotowski’s work on the body–voice dynamic during the Theatre of Productions phase via Akropolis and The Constant Prince. The interweaving of elements by twenty-first-century artists develops into a separation and even elimination. Therefore the considered total act of theatre, i.e. the actor–audience dynamic is challenged and the interaction with alternative mediums instead of direct human interaction in theatre merits ethical considerations. Finally, in contemporary theatre, two twenty-first-century case studies are investigated: Simon McBurney’s The Encounter 2016 in 3D binaural sound experienced through headphones for a more intimate audience experience; and Heiner Goebbels’ Stifters Dinge 2008 – an installation-type performance that investigates the effect that an absent actor has on audience involvement. Theatre artists experiment with sound in order to involve audiences in sonic experiences through listening, employing sound designers as collaborative artists. Therefore, one may argue that through digital technology, the sound designer, like the actor, has become one of the main elements in the act of theatre. Description: M.A.THEATRE&PERFORMANCE

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z