We can now announce details of our next concert: New Structures in Composition, 5pm Saturday 16 September 2017 at Fitzwilliam College Chapel, Fitzwilliam College, Storeys Way, Cambridge CB3 0DG. Admission free.
With the decline in popularity of traditional compositional structures such as sonata form, it is interesting to explore fields beyond music for new structural paradigms. This academic year, CNM member Francis Knights has a visiting mathematician, Pablo Padilla (UNAM, Mexico), working on a joint project applying mathematical tools to musicological problems (http://formal-methods-in-musicology.webnode.com/). This has inspired a number of ideas for how various algorithms and numerical patterns taken from the natural world could be used in composition.
Performers include Francis Knights, Dan Tidhar (harpsichord, organ), Sarah Cattley, Pablo Padilla, Janet Wheeler (piano), Paula Muldoon (viola), Johanna Finnemann (viola da gamba), Ellen Jameson (recorder) and Stephen Watkins (recorder and piano). The programme comprises works based upon the following algorithms and concepts:
Geometric methods: three dimensional music
Mark Bellis: Vulcan Chess; piano, harpsichord, organ, recorder, viola
Geometric methods: graphical scores
Colin Blundell: un aleatorio estudiado; harpsichord, viola, recorder
Combinatorial algorithms
Sarah Cattley: A Transformation of Littles; piano duet
Probabilistic ideas: Dice games
Dave Collins: Triple Roll; two keyboards
Iterated maps: self-similarity and fractals
Laurence Glazier: Prelude in C minor and Birthday Barcarolle; solo piano
Arithmetic procedures: Least common multiple and canonical forms
Ivan Moody: Passacaglia; solo harpsichord
The Syracuse conjecture
David and Pablo Padilla: Rondo 3n+1; traverse flute, viola da gamba, harpsichord
Recursivity
Peter Thorne: Whimsical Waltz; solo piano
Music and image
Julia Usher: Calculating differences: transformations at the edge: segmenting a leaf; viola, recorders
Symbols and codes
Ian Wilson: Be fruitful and multiply; piano, harpsichord, organ, recorder, viola, bongos