Doctoral Degrees (Music)

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Music) by Author "Ghayem, Nina"

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    Sounds of suffering : a creative response to human suffering and emotional pain in the form of a contemporary composition
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2020-03) Ghayem, Nina; Roosenschoon, Hans; Ludemann, Winfried; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Department of Music.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This doctoral dissertation is intended as a contribution to the field of practice-based research in music, more specifically in the area of composition. It presents a study on the topic of human suffering in which theoretical and creative work are integrated so as to provide a view on the subject from the perspective of the researcher as composer. Throughout their history and in all cultures humans have been confronted by the phenomenon of pain and suffering as an integral part of life and have been dealing with it in various ways. This also applies to artists, who have responded to the phenomenon with the respective creative means at their disposal. For a twenty-first century composer the devices that were developed by composers in past centuries to represent or express pain and suffering are no longer viable. Therefore, to respond creatively to this phenomenon in a way that is contemporary, musically sensitive and stylistically appropriate, I explore the potential which the sounds of actual human voices expressing pain and suffering offer me for my compositions. The aim of the project, therefore, was to record and analyse the expressive quality of human voices in a state of suffering so as to understand their particular characteristics and then to exploit these characteristics for my creative work. For this purpose I undertook extensive fieldwork, during which I recorded vocal expressions of pain by people in a state of suffering, more specifically the expression of grief in the form of mourning at funerals conducted at public cemeteries. These sound samples were then analysed by means of SPEARsound analysis software. The results provided me with raw sound material for my creative work, which, in turn, led to the portfolio of compositions offered as part of this dissertation. Ultimately, the challenge was to find a theoretical basis on which to base the entire project and to integrate its various parts, i.e. cultural awareness, fieldwork, questions of compositional style, the possibilities offered by software and the actual creative work, into a coherent whole.