ARE YOU SERIOUS? ANALYSING EXAGGERATION IN RICHARD AYRES'S NO. 37B

Exaggeration as a deliberate aesthetic device has seen increased popularity with composers working in the western art music tradition in the last few decades. Their music promotes a feeling of excessiveness as an intentional compositional effect, worthy of being taken seriously. This would seem to encourage the development of analytical techniques for understanding how it works, but almost by definition exaggeration tends to be resistant to analysis, its transgressive, anti-rational character appearing incompatible with the systematic approaches associated with this discipline. This article analyses the forms of exaggeration employed in Richard Ayres's orchestral piece No. 37b (2006) and the techniques used to achieve them, developing a framework for how we might attempt to analyse exaggeration in a manner that is rigorous but sensitive to the nature of musical exaggeration. The article finishes by making the case for how exaggeration can be interpreted as sincere as well as ironic and why deliberate exaggeration has become an appropriate and attractive device for composers in the last few decades