Research

Peter completed his PhD in 2014. Entitled 'Microtonality and the Recorder 1961-2013: Repertoire, Tone Colour, and Performance', the thesis focussed on the development of the recorder's microtonal repertoire, and considered some of the difficulties of performing microtonal music, including potential problems of intonation, and developing interpretations.

Like many so-called ‘alternative’ fingerings, microtonal fingerings produce changes in the tone quality of microtonal pitches compared to that of the regular diatonic pitches with which we are all familiar. This became a major focus of my research and led to the development of a method for objectively and accurately identifying those differences. With this information players will be able to select fingerings for both dynamic and microtonal purposes with confidence that will offer consistency of tone colour. For composers of music for recorder, this information will open up the potential for an entirely new palette of tonal and dynamic possibilities in their compositions. You can download a very short resume of this work by clicking on the link 'Loudness and Tone Colour', to the right. More in-depth information will be published in future.

I also examined the microtonal works of six composers in order to explore the aesthetics of their microtonal writing, and discovered a fascinating variety of ways in which microtonality has been incorporated into the recorder’s contemporary repertoire. The composers whose works were studied include: Donald Bousted, Christopher Fox, Nicola LeFanu, David Lumsdaine, Michael Wolters, and Markus Zahnhausen. My own piece, ‘Dialogue for One Recorder Player’, made extensive use of extreme dynamics, as well as microtonality.

All this research will eventually become available by clicking the relevant links, to the right.

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