Artist of the Week
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Artist: Hollie Harding
Artform: Composer What do you do and what are your main focuses? I am a composer of contemporary classical music with an interest in the adapted use of space and performer and audience placement in musical performance. I also draw upon musicians’ physical actions within my work, using this as a structuring device and source for sonic and choreographic ideas. Where have you studied? I studied for my BMus in Composition at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. I then had a year out and spent three months working in Bergen, Norway for a very interesting contemporary music festival called Borealis Festival (http://www.borealisfestival.no/en/), before starting my Masters in Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in 2010. |
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I’m currently in the concluding stages of a PhD in Creative Practice Composition, at Trinity Laban with supervisors Professor Sam Hayden and Dr. Dominic Murcott. I couldn’t imagine a better place to study for a doctorate!
Tell us about 'Melting, Shifting, Liquid World'.
Melting, Shifting, Liquid World is the concluding work of my doctoral study. It is an immersive, site-specific piece written for electric viola soloist Nic Pendlebury and the Trinity Laban String Ensemble, for performance on the iconic Great Map at the National Maritime Museum. The work explores themes of climate change and ocean pollution and includes a pre-recorded electroacoustic part that is delivered to the audience over bone-conduction, open-ear headphones.
The piece explores the idea of music as an environment that the audience is surrounded by and can move around and within. There are three layers of sound experienced within the piece, the first emerges from the live acoustic string ensemble who are spread-out across the Great Map, the second from the quadraphonic speaker system which amplifies the solo electric viola and audio effects, and the third from bone-conduction open-ear headsets worn by the audience. In this environment sound can therefore happen very close to, far from, and all around the listener. The piece explores the movement of sound around and across these different layers, and around the static or moving audience.
Tell us about 'Melting, Shifting, Liquid World'.
Melting, Shifting, Liquid World is the concluding work of my doctoral study. It is an immersive, site-specific piece written for electric viola soloist Nic Pendlebury and the Trinity Laban String Ensemble, for performance on the iconic Great Map at the National Maritime Museum. The work explores themes of climate change and ocean pollution and includes a pre-recorded electroacoustic part that is delivered to the audience over bone-conduction, open-ear headphones.
The piece explores the idea of music as an environment that the audience is surrounded by and can move around and within. There are three layers of sound experienced within the piece, the first emerges from the live acoustic string ensemble who are spread-out across the Great Map, the second from the quadraphonic speaker system which amplifies the solo electric viola and audio effects, and the third from bone-conduction open-ear headsets worn by the audience. In this environment sound can therefore happen very close to, far from, and all around the listener. The piece explores the movement of sound around and across these different layers, and around the static or moving audience.
Melting Shifting, Liquid World also draws upon three different sound worlds that move and shift between these three layers of sound. The first is pitch-less sound, which encompasses field recordings of Arctic Sea Ice (provided by renowned field recordist Chris Watson), white noise, water sounds, vocal sibilant and fricative consonant sounds and noise-based sounds from the live strings. This includes the performers generating white noise, scraping and snapping at their instruments, and playing with extended techniques that encourage overtones and distortion. This sound world is evocative of the volatile and changeable natural world, and draws upon sounds of, and from, the ocean.
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The second sound world incorporates sonic interpretations of Ocean Monitoring Indicators. Ocean Monitoring Indicators are free downloadable data sets covering the past 25 years of the key variables used to monitor the oceanic trends in line with climate change, including ocean warming, sea level rise and the melting of sea ice. The data sets are produced by the Copernicus Marine Service as a part of the European Union’s Copernicus Programme, the world’s single largest Earth Observation Programme. The data set that I selected covers the rise in global ocean heat between 1993 and 2016, and includes the mean heat measurements along with the five different sets of measurements that this mean heat is derived from.
I interpreted this sonically, by scaling the heat measurements into audible frequencies (Hertz), using the data to determine the tuning and pitch inter-relationship of six sine waves, one for each set of measurements. As the measurements sit around similar points and all reflect a rise in temperature, I knew that the sonic outcome from this process would be one of sustained sine tones with interweaving changes of pitch and an overall upward pitch trajectory from the start to finish. I decided, through experimentation, to restrict the pitch range of the sonic interpretation to specific intervals. |
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I found that the reduced scale of the pitch interpretation made the rising trajectory of the pitch of the sine tones, much more gradual and less obvious to the listener, reflecting the nature of the slow cumulative changes to the temperature of the ocean, over time. The reduced scale of interpretation also created smaller, microtonal differences between the sine tones that in turn generated beating patterns (vibrato) which oscillate at different rates over time, and through manipulation, between the left and right channels. When delivered over the headsets the beating manifests as an aural and a physical sensation for the listener, as the bone-conduction headsets function by delivering micro-vibrations through the cheek bones to the cochlear, bypassing the eardrum. This physical sensation of sound became a new tool that I could utilise within the piece, using it to allow the listener to experience and feel the localisation of sound to the headsets at certain points in the work, and at others working to obscure the origin of sounds for the audience between the different varied layers.
The final sound world in the piece is that of melody and harmony, which is primarily delivered by the acoustic strings and electric viola, but also emerges in the electroacoustic parts from pre-recorded processed fog-horns, and from in room machinery. The harmony of the piece tends to centre on changing fixed drones or pivot notes, and the rate of harmonic change remains relatively slow. The staticity of harmony aims to lay into relief the volatile and evolving timbral and spatial textures, which change at a much faster pace. The electric viola has two main melodic solo ‘refrain’ sections at the start and end of the work, which lead into cadenza like passages for the soloist, involving rapid string crossings and bow motion, in combination with fragile left hand harmonics - generating volatile timbres with overtones and distortion. These two sections bookend a more turbulent, heavy and gestural middle section to the piece that builds into an expansive electracoustic solo. The concluding electric viola ‘cadenza’ passage features a new harmonic and melodic accompaniment from the ensemble, which slows into a looped chorale that is eventually obliterated by white noise as the headsets transmit a reading of ‘Still Life with Sea Pinks and High Tide’ (The Silvering, Bloodaxe Books, 2016), spoken into the ears of the audience by the poet herself, Maura Dooley.
Why do you compose?
I came to composition as a spin-off from writing cheesy pop songs for a band I was in, in my early teens. This combined with my learning to play the violin from an early age, which is what first ignited my interest in ‘classical’ music, and eventually led me to move towards writing short orchestral and instrumental pieces instead of songs.
I really enjoy the whole process of collaborating with performers and the social side of music: a group of people working together to make a performance that is shared with an audience - for me this is an important motivating force. I also see music as a way to move people beyond verbal and written communication, and as a way to explore different perceptual experiences.
I came to composition as a spin-off from writing cheesy pop songs for a band I was in, in my early teens. This combined with my learning to play the violin from an early age, which is what first ignited my interest in ‘classical’ music, and eventually led me to move towards writing short orchestral and instrumental pieces instead of songs.
I really enjoy the whole process of collaborating with performers and the social side of music: a group of people working together to make a performance that is shared with an audience - for me this is an important motivating force. I also see music as a way to move people beyond verbal and written communication, and as a way to explore different perceptual experiences.
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Who are you influenced by?
I have a very broad range of influences which tend to reflect my own changing artistic preoccupations, for example Lachenmann’s use of extended techniques and physicality of performance in his Musique Concrete Instrumentale, or Xenakis’ exploration of sound movement in his work for spatialised percussion sextet, Persephassa. I am also really interested in composers like Tarek Atoui and Pauline Oliveros who explore different perceptual experiences for participants / audience, within their work. My musical colleagues, collaborators and peers are also probably the biggest source of inspiration… |
Divine Company
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What are your future ambitions?
I’d really like to continue to compose and design further large scale site-specific creative projects like Melting, Shifting, Liquid World - with a particular focus on cross-art / cross genre collaboration.
What is more important, talent or hard work?
Perseverance and hard-work are 100% most important! I think it’s also really important to not be discouraged by unsuccessful funding bids or competition results, and to remember that it’s one panel on a particular day, who had to make a decision in a limited time frame with limited resources. If you keep applying and working hard it will eventually pay off.
I’d really like to continue to compose and design further large scale site-specific creative projects like Melting, Shifting, Liquid World - with a particular focus on cross-art / cross genre collaboration.
What is more important, talent or hard work?
Perseverance and hard-work are 100% most important! I think it’s also really important to not be discouraged by unsuccessful funding bids or competition results, and to remember that it’s one panel on a particular day, who had to make a decision in a limited time frame with limited resources. If you keep applying and working hard it will eventually pay off.
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What is your favourite instrument to write for?
I most enjoy writing for stringed instruments. I think this is because of my background of playing the violin from an early age, but I am also attracted to the physicality of string playing and the friction and actions involved, which can be very theatrically and visually striking. |
Anything interesting coming up soon?
Yes! Melting, Shifting, Liquid World will be premiered three times on the Great Map at the National Maritime Museum on the 16th March, 17:30, 19:30 and 21:30. The tickets are currently sold out, but any returns will be released next week here: https://www.trinitylaban.ac.uk/whats-on/trinity-laban-string-ensemble-melting-shifting-liquid-world and you can add yourself to the ticket waiting list by emailing me: h.harding@trinitylaban.ac.uk
Further Links:
Website - www.hollieharding.com
'Melting, Shifting, Liquid World' Blog - http://www.hollieharding.com/melting-shifting-liquid-world
Yes! Melting, Shifting, Liquid World will be premiered three times on the Great Map at the National Maritime Museum on the 16th March, 17:30, 19:30 and 21:30. The tickets are currently sold out, but any returns will be released next week here: https://www.trinitylaban.ac.uk/whats-on/trinity-laban-string-ensemble-melting-shifting-liquid-world and you can add yourself to the ticket waiting list by emailing me: h.harding@trinitylaban.ac.uk
Further Links:
Website - www.hollieharding.com
'Melting, Shifting, Liquid World' Blog - http://www.hollieharding.com/melting-shifting-liquid-world
