Exhalation / Expiration for Wind Ensemble (PDF)

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2011 in the subject Musicology - Miscellaneous, grade: Pass, McGill University (Schulich School of Music), course: Composition, language: English, abstract: Exhalation / Expiration, a composition for a wind ensemble of thirty-four players, continues a series of musical homages by the composer honouring her father, Alexander Fol. The composition unites different musical devices to accomplish a metaphorical mapping of the infection of a healthy body with a mortal sickness, followed by the organism's gradual demise. The work's duration is twenty-one-and-a-half minutes.The design of these materials, which incorporates the form, harmony, rhythm and orchestration, applies an approach to musical semiotics informed by the philosophical doctrine of Thracian Oral Orphism, as well as by medical research on terminally ill cancer patients. The author defines two types of musical signs, the event-type and the process-type, and decides upon a musical realization thereof at the formal and structural levels. In the composition, the signs are organized as musical symbols that portray the gradual transition between the types of music symbolizing health - 'A' - and sickness - 'B' - represented by types of harmonic, rhythmic and orchestrational treatment.