Morphopoiesis - A general procedure for structuring form by Panyiotis Kokoras [From earlabs.org]: Composers have always needed tools to craft their music and theorists need a methodology to analyse compositions. This paper examines a theoretical framework for a general procedure for structuring musical form.

Abstract: Composers have always needed tools to craft their music and theorists need a methodology to analyse compositions. This paper examines a theoretical framework for a general procedure for structuring musical form. It studies the organising principles of the internal attributes of a musical work that give a unit its specific identity, the functional relationships between it and other units, and the ordering and direction of those units. During recent decades, timbre as a basic form-bearing dimension has attracted the interest of an increasing number of composers and theorists. In the light of this interest, a formulation to define the structural procedures of form becomes indispensable as a result of the new content and the new questions which it raises. Different procedures for structuring form have been developed throughout the history of western music. They have always been related to the content, to the musical material used in each period. A brief retrospection is presented, from the Middle Ages to the present, of the evolution of form as a process. This historical survey concludes with a definition of the process of Morphopoiesis and suggests a next step in the evolution of musical form. The proposed framework continues with a more in-depth analysis of Morphopoiesis, analysing it into four hierarchically-ordered levels. From the highest to the lowest levels respectively these are Cognition & Perception, Motion, Typomorphology and Transformation. The Transformation level is further refined by a description of the main transformation form types and their sound process domains. An array of researches and theories has been taken into account to form the levels of Morphopoiesis. Several theories and concepts are included from works on psychoacoustics, music perception and cognition by McAdams and Bregman, on sound morphology and typology originally introduced by Schaeffer, and on spectromorphology by Smalley. Morphopoiesis integrates all these theories into a general procedure which aims to provide a better insight into how form is structured, and therefore a better understanding of the music itself. Morphopoiesis is a tool for listening to, analysing and making music of all kinds, ranging from electroacoustic music to instrumental and vocal music. It is the abstraction of the creative process at its fundamental level, the form.
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BIOGRAPHY

Panayiotis Kokoras (Greece, 1974) has studied composition and classical guitar in Athens, Greece. In 1999 he moved to England, for postgraduate studies where he has completed his MA and PhD in composition at the University of York with funds among others from Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) and Al. Trianti Music Scholarships (Society Friends of Music).

Composing on what he calls Holophonic texture; he has developed a sophisticated control of abstract sound structures, which focuses specifically on the morphopoiesis of sound and its chronotopological precision. He is concerned to see how he, the listener, maps the acoustic signal into a structural representation on a psychoacoustic basis of the perception of music. His compositions include significant influences of the electroacoustic studio upon acoustic instrumental compositions and vice versa. Panayiotis Kokoras’ creative output ranges from acoustic works to mixed media and tape one.