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198249 https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.2.N.198249 http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ All Rights Reserved 2024 79 pages Doctoral Dissertation Academic theses Text eng Ridgway, Thomas Meir, Baruch Breslin, Cathal Bolanos, Gabriel Arizona State University Partial requirement for: D.M.A., Arizona State University, 2024 Field of study: Music This document endeavors to provide a contextual, analytical, and interpretive framework of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Harrison’s Clocks. First, I investigate the background and influences of Birtwistle and how they come together to shape his compositional works. This is achieved through a biographical sketch of the composer, an overview of John Harrison, the influence of early 20th century visual artists on Birtwistle’s works, as well as a comparison between Klee’s artistic techniques and Birtwistle’s own compositional techniques. Next, I analyze each of the five movements of Harrison’s Clocks, looking into the ways that Birtwistle’s mechanisms control multiple dimensions of musical parameters (such as duration, register, and intervals) especially through the motives of oscillation and periodicity. By breaking down each movement of Harrison’s Clocks to their simplest mechanisms, this paper seeks to show how, through repetition, superimposition, and juxtaposition, Birtwistle created a perpetually evolving, yet familiar musical landscape. Finally, I guide the prospective performer in the preparation of the work through observations of the “Stravinskian” approach to expression and in the more tactile, practical concerns of rehearsing and preparing the work. In addition to this document, I prepared and performed a lecture-recital titled Inner Being: Exploring the Perception of Multidimensional Musical Objects Through the Lens of Visual Art in Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Harrison’s Clocks, which details the relationship between the techniques utilized by several early 20th century visual artists and their technical application in Birtwistle’s compositional approach. This lecture-recital concludes with a complete performance of Harrison’s Clocks. performing arts Music theory Music History Birtwistle Harrison's Clocks mechanism Modernism Paul Klee Piano Distilling Sir Harrison Birtwistle's Multidimensional Musical Objects in “Harrison's Clocks”