Michael John Gerard Higgins
*16 May 1971
Works by Michael John Gerard Higgins
Biography
I am a composer and writer, from the Wirral peninsula. I compose music that is entirely diatonic in nature, as well as making extensive use of the Fibonacci sequence, and other creative restrictions. My latest book, Seeing is Beveiling, which incorporates much of the music listed here, is published by The Artel Press. https://www.theartelpress.co.uk/new-title/a-sublime-allegory-in-new-fiction/
About the music
In my composing, I have put myself under the rather Oulipian restraint of restricting myself to the use of only the seven notes of the diatonic scale. It seems to me that of the many potential avenues of exploration opened up by the earliest polyphonic composers of the 12th to 13th centuries, only a relatively few have been fully explored. With this in mind, my work tries to imagine what earlier minds may have achieved - still working in a more or less polymodal idiom - had they had recourse to the techniques of chance - and other - procedures so readily accessible to ourselves. Other key structural means central to my work are the use of the golden section, a preoccupation with the polarity between extremely long held notes and equally long silences and resonances, a fascination with ornament (Islamic and Hiberno-Saxon interlacing, for instance) and a love of unexplored canonic forms - 'canon sine pausis' etc.
Seeing is Beveiling
I have recently completed a work of experimental fiction, entitled 'Seeing is Beveiling', soon to be published by The Artel Press, which, as well as incorporating hundreds of photographs and drawings, also refers the reader to many of the pieces of music available here for publication by Universal Edition. https://www.theartelpress.co.uk/new-title/a-sublime-allegory-in-new-fiction/
