Davidson, Robert. PhD dissertation: the Commentary

Davidson, Robert. Commentary of folio. University of Queensland, PhD Dissertation Unpublished.

Chapter 1 Introduction

Composers work today in a tolerant environment, hard-won by the efforts of modernist pioneers. ..... While previous generations of composers may have had to contend with hostile reactions if they chose to strike out on their own path, they nevertheless had a springboard against which to rebel, if that was their inclination. ..... In the current climate, almost anything may be considered valid, and an enormous rage of music is easily available.  Composers are forced to choose from a bewildering array of possibilities with no clear guidance other than their own predilections.

.....For many younger composers, the extreme individualism propounded in much of the twentieth century has become unattractive, and attention has been drawn to cultures in which collectivity is more highly prized.  It has become almost de rigeur for young composers to be well acquainted with at least one major non-Western tradition, and certainly not unusual for them to have pursued cross cultural training, with the view that Western music is simply one tradition, without special status.

p. 2
Perhaps more significantly, I look to the deeper roots of my own Western tradition as a primary guide.  The forces which have powered music for centuries in the West - the energy of the cadence, the directed motion of dissonance and resolution, the structural cohesiveness of hierarchical time and pith -  also drive me music, but in ways which belong to my own time.

p. 4
Some of the works in the folio place the emphasis most strongly on the primary qualities, inviting the audience to experience the sound in a physical, tangible way, and to be carried away by the inexorable processes taking place. ..... are clearly influenced by early minimalism, but also by the mathematical approaches taken by Ligeti in his Meccanico works and pieces such as the piano Etudes, and by Stockhausen in music of his work of the 1960s.  In my etudes, i take a parametric approach; each work unfolds by linear processes acting upon a small number of parameters, such as textural density, register, vertical alignment, or length of cells.

p. 5
What all the works share, and again this is a legacy of experimentalism and minimalism, is a preoccupation with experiences of time.  Music can be a powerful agent in changing perception of time, and in giving insight into what has been claimed to be the illusory nature of both time and a conscious self experiencing time. 

p. 6
A temporary suspension of the self-model illusion, or the potentially ecstatic experience of losing oneself, is sometimes possible in listening to music. ..... I hasten to add, however, that the music is not intended to induce timeless and selfless psychological states, but to borrow some of the qualities of such experiences to enhance the musical experience.

Fascinating to see how the author approached the topic about 'time'.  A writing can works as a great model for mine.