Anxiety/Influence

Anxiety/Influence was written as part of a concert I curated in Birmingham, (re)apropos, focusing on the use of ‘appropriation’ as a compositional device. The piece is based loosely around Harold Bloom’s 1973 book ‘The Anxiety of Influence’, a renowned book in the field of literary criticism which puts forward the idea that any creative act involves a series of six steps of ‘misreading’ to create something new.

I researched a well-known living composer who claims a certain pop music outfit as his main influence. The influencing act he speaks about in many interviews bothered me, as I initially saw it as a transparent attempt to market himself as more egalitarian and likeable, but after lengthy reflection I realised that the idea of tangible influence is ridiculous in itself.

The piece itself is structured loosely around Bloom’s six ‘revisionary ratios’ he sets out in his book – hurdles for the artist to overcome during the creative act – and takes the aforeunmentioned composer’s pop influence and slowly builds it into his own own, existing composition.

A performance score of the piece exists for amplified solo female voice and fixed audiovisual media.