Relating to music as a pseudo-language, composer Angus Barnacle is influenced by the recorded history of music in addition to popular contemporary vernaculars such as microtonality, noise and extended performance technique. His compositions include pieces for soloists, ensembles, orchestras and electronic mediums, drawing inspiration from ongoing research into just intonation, noise and the techniques associated with their production. He has a masters (microtonality in contemporary music practice) from the Royal Conservatory in the Hague, and a PhD from Sydney Conservatory (Harnessing The Musicality of Noise: Formal Grammar in Music Composition). Among other prizes, most recently, his 2023 microtonal soundtrack to the Orchid of Redemption game “Joon Shining” won the Dreamhack composition of the year prize. In addition to digital media work, his music has been performed in venues including the Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, St John’s London, November Muziek Festival in Den Bosch, Korzo Theatre in the Hague and the Barossa Music Festival South Australia. Ensembles he has worked with include Bang on a Can, Nieuwe Ensemble, New European Ensemble, the Gelders Orchestra, Zephyr Quartet, Asko-Schönberg Ensemble and Southbank Sinfonia. Current projects include pitching an inter-dimensional dystopian adventure game at Sony, composing a microtonal flute concerto for flautist Frederico Paixão, sitting principal flautist at the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and setting a collection of childhood themed poetry by the English poet James Greene (1938 – 2023).
Current Projects
Winner “Best Music Composition”
Published in 2023, Joon Shining is a golf-like platformer with a supernatural story. Players must use magic to bend physics, influence the environment, and make improbable shots to puzzle dodo eggs through a wild and varied environment into nests where they can hatch.
The music for Joon Shining features story-rich instruments such as shell horn, bone clap-sticks, blues-harmonica and dulcitone (an out-of-production tuning-fork piano), and diverse orchestrations to reflect the developing narrative and gameplay. In addition to expressive melodic and harmonic phrases conjured from pure ratio tuning on all instruments, the music evokes the unexpected reanimation of the dodos through the sounds of antique hunting whistles that may have been used to hunt fowl as early as the 17th century, when the dodos were still alive. The sounds of the hunting whistles and a variety of other acoustic but man-made noises are employed throughout the score to engage timbrally with the mythically immense significance of Joon’s un-extinction event.
Script written in collaboration with Camilla Greene
An adventure game where musical puzzles allow the player to navigate their way through a mythical narrative set in the ruins and gardens of a to-be-discovered civilisation.
Hospital Hustlers
A TV musical about an aspiring musician who finds their ambitions sidelined by political activism when her day job is privatised and conditions deteriorate. Script written in collaboration with Camilla Greene.
Resolution Seekers
A music theatre piece about the International Bill of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court. Combining Interrogative theatre with a series of touching personal vignettes, poet Peter Bakowski, theatre maker David Jentgens, the New European Ensemble and Angus Barnacle are working on a compelling narrative of the human condition and the bureaucracy we have constructed in an attempt to save ourselves from it.
http://www.neweuropeanensemble.com/index.html
http://bakowskipoetrynews.blogspot.co.uk
Study
2024-2025 microtonality research at Microtonal Studios in Helsinki
2014-2020 music composition PhD, Sydney Conservatorium.
Research topic: Harnessing The Musicality of Noise: Formal Grammar in Music Composition.
2009-2010 Master of composition with distinction. Royal Conservatory in the Hague.
Research topic: Practical and Conceptual Implementation of the Harmonic Series in Contemporary Music Practice.
2001-2004 Bachelor of Music Composition & Violin. Flinders Street School of Music.
2000-2001 Bachelor of Arts in English literature, drama, history and politics. Flinders University, South Australia.