Doctoral Public Lecture | Carlos Verdam Maria

Student Name: Carlos (Cadu) Verdam Maria
Program: Music - Composition
Thesis Title: Broken things - a study of continuity and change

Abstract: 

Broken things is a 20-minute orchestral work exploring sonic metamorphosis through continuous, organic transformation of musical materials. The piece rejects repetition, instead blurring formal boundaries as ideas constantly evolve. The music is structured around a gradual downward registral trajectory, with sections defined by their spectral and harmonic placement.

Melody Pairs and the overtone series serve as foundational materials in Broken things. Melody Pairs are two pairs of descending lines, both in minor modes, one of them with a Phrygian inflection. The interaction of these two distinct materials produces new elements: a Melody Pair variant based on the overtone series; “broken tonality,” a term borrowed from Hans Abrahamsen, and micro-chromaticism, which is here inspired by Georg Friedrich Haas’s Klangspaltung, or the “sound-splitting” effect. The composition also integrates prime numbers to determine durational structures and harmonic content.

This document comprehensively analyzes the harmonic, formal, and extramusical aspects of Broken things, illustrating its transformative processes with examples, graphs, and tables.

Please contact Audrey Yardley-Jones, Graduate Program Assistant, Don Wright Faculty of Music, for further information: ayardley@uwo.ca