ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the music of the British composer Jocelyn Pook. She is both a composer and a performer, and has created music for and with a variety of media including theatre, dance, TV and film. Minimalist composers also embraced the everyday sound-world of the twentieth century. Classical music had rarely reflected the everyday sound-world but minimalist composers let this mix of sounds — organic or mechanised — infiltrate into their music. Mechanised sound dominates daily life, particularly in dense urban environments. For example, Pook’s piece, Metallic Sonata, from the score of the dance piece Desh, uses urban sounds recorded in Bangladesh that have been remixed, looped and combined to create an evocative sound palette. Dionysus by Jocelyn Pook similarly has a four-pitch ostinato (the pattern oscillates on two pitches but the vocals are phrased over four pitches) that repeats all the way through.
