David Gorton joins Orpheus Instituut as Visiting Researcher for 2025–2026

We are pleased to announce that composer and researcher David Gorton (Royal Academy of Music, University of London) will join the Orpheus Institute as a Visiting Researcher during the 2025–2026 academic year. His stay will be spread over several short visits. During this time, Gorton will collaborate with researchers from the Resounding Libraries cluster, while also engaging with the MetamusicX and Performance and Embodiment clusters to enrich the discursive and experimental aspects of his work.

David Gorton’s research is rooted in a long-term compositional practice that draws on and transforms source material from the long seventeenth century. His compositions—many of which have been published, recorded, and presented internationally—occupy a creative space between arrangement and original composition. By repurposing historical materials through layering, fragmentation, recontextualisation, and stylistic dislocation, Gorton explores what he calls a "compositional aesthetic of the uncanny"—where the familiar and unfamiliar coexist. This practice not only generates new works but also acts as a form of critical commentary on the original sources. His written output includes contributions to Contemporary Music Review, Music & Practice, and volumes published by Oxford University Press and Leuven University Press.

As Visiting Researcher, Gorton will focus on the Ton Koopman collection housed at Orpheus Instituut. This collection of Renaissance and Baroque materials offers a rich and concentrated archive ideally suited to his compositional methodology. Beyond sourcing individual pieces, Gorton is particularly interested in the meta-level relationships between materials—patterns of organisation, annotations, or historical curatorial choices—that may reflect Koopman’s broad engagement with early music. He also aims to refine the ways in which his compositional practice articulates new research knowledge, informed by the critical discourse of the Orpheus Research Centre’s community.

One of the central projects Gorton will develop during his visits is a new opera, Clytemnestra. With a libretto adapted from early English translations of Aeschylus and Seneca, and drawing stylistically on English theatrical music from the pre-Purcell generation, the work will blend newly composed and repurposed music into an imagined Restoration-era sound world. This project, like much of Gorton’s work, functions as both artistic creation and commentary—interrogating historical forms through contemporary composition.

We look forward to welcoming David Gorton to Orpheus Instituut and to the perspectives his research will bring to our ongoing exploration of artistic experimentation in music.