Edmund Hunt

United Kingdom °1982
research interests: contemporary music, electroacoustic music, composition, computer music, Chamber music, composition process, contemporary dance, opera, voice and live electronics, voice, Live-electronics, Orchestra, Language
affiliation: Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University
en

Edmund Hunt composes instrumental, vocal and electroacoustic music. He came to composition via a degree in early medieval languages and literature, and his composition PhD (completed in 2016, at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, UK) investigated creative approaches to early medieval text in contemporary music. His work has been performed by ensembles including CHROMA, The Curious Chamber Players, The London Philharmonic Orchestra, Psappha and The Royal Northern Sinfonia, and by soloists including Mary Wiegold, Chris Redgate and Roderick Williams. In 2014, Edmund’s orchestral piece ‘Argatnél’ was premiered by the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, as part of the LPO’s Leverhulme Young Composers’ Programme. In 2018, he was appointed as the Royal Philharmonic Society/Wigmore Hall Apprentice Composer, resulting in the premiere of a new work for accordion and viola at the Wigmore Hall in June. In April 2018, he started a new role as Postdoctoral Researcher at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University. Current research activities include the development of Integra Live electronics for the voice, and composition and live electronics for dance.

research

research expositions

  • Composition as Commentary: Voice and Poetry in Electroacoustic Music (2020) author(s): Edmund Hunt published in: Journal for Artistic Research, Birmingham City University
    What is the role of a spoken or sung text in an electroacoustic composition? Does it represent anachronism, assigning the role of communication to the voice and thereby depriving more abstract electroacoustic material of its rhetorical force? Does the disembodied, electroacoustic voice distance the audience from the communicative power of the words that are heard? Although Simon Emmerson argued that the disembodied human voice in acousmatic music can often seem frustrating, this sense of disembodiment might be turned to the composer’s advantage, as the basis of a methodology for creative practice. In the process of developing a methodology to address questions of text, language, voice, and electroacoustic technology, I created two musical compositions. Both works used the untranslated words of an enigmatic Old English poem, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer’. At first glance, the idea of using a text in an obscure or ancient language that carries little or no semantic meaning for the listeners might raise further questions. Is this a deliberate attempt at obfuscation, hiding the paucity of the composer’s ideas behind a veneer of archaism or even naive exoticism? As my investigation progressed, I began to envisage the process of electroacoustic composition as a type of non-linguistic commentary on a text. Rather than hindering the listener’s understanding of a composition inspired by literature, the electroacoustic voice might help to reveal different interpretations of a text, allowing multiple ideas and identities to be heard.
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