A Musical Analogue with blurred space in My Erhu solo Fireworks

Abstract

This paper discusses my recent erhu solo project Fireworks which is a musical analogue that I analyse using Chuang Tzu’s blurred aesthetics to investigate a musical space between determinacy and indeterminacy in Chinese national music. What is particularly interesting to me about this blurred musical space is that it is not polarised around an idea of ‘the invisible’ or ‘the indefinable’ as pure negative space but can be perceived in a more graduated area between positive and negative, fixed and unstable. Behind this concept of musical space is the creation of an ‘interpenetrated’ identity, a fluctuating boundary between opposing qualities, or the subject’s and object’s identities. In seeking to find structural analogues congruent with the concept of the blur, the challenges and focus of this work rely upon the architecture of ambivalent states, which include string timbre and frequency, the relations of determinacy-indeterminacy, space and spacing architecture, performative indeterminacy and fragments, and silence. This focus of this research into a musical engagement with blurred aesthetics has allowed me to examine how I might approach musical structure, specifically by the framing of events or phenomena, and by expanding my musical language and creative ideas.