As a composer and researcher, David’s practice is rooted in a compositional approach that reflects upon and transforms source material from the long seventeenth century. His internationally published and recorded compositions bridge arrangement and original composition by repurposing historical soundworlds. His written outputs include contributions to Contemporary Music Review, Music & Practice, and volumes published by Oxford University Press and Leuven University Press.
At the Orpheus Instituut, David will focus on the Ton Koopman collection of Renaissance and Baroque materials, which provide an archive ideally suited to his compositional methodology: layering, fragmentation, recontextualisation and stylistic dislocation cohere into a “compositional aesthetic of the uncanny”, where the familiar and unfamiliar can coexist. This artistic practice both generates new works and also provides critical commentary on the original sources.
In addition to sourcing individual pieces, David will research the meta-level relationships between materials – patterns of organisation, annotations or historical curatorial choices – seen in Koopman’s broader engagement with early music.
This research will feed into the main project that David will develop during his visits - a new opera, Clytemnestra. The libretto is adapted from early English translations of Aeschylus and Seneca. It blends newly composed and repurposed music into an imagined Restoration-era soundscape, drawing stylistically on English theatrical genres from the pre-Purcell generation.
Image credit: Michael De Lausnay