The Sh’er Jie ensemble of Sichuan Music Conservatory 

On Wednesday 28th November Penumbra, by Irish composer Scott McLaughlin, was performed at the Chinese University of Hong Kong by the Luxembourg Sinfonietta, during a ten-day festival of new music from around the world.

McLaughlin’s music is concerned with presenting the kinds of sonorities that you may hear when a bell is struck or a cymbal is bowed – strange quasi-harmonies that arise when the upper overtones (of conflicting fundamentals) are caught by the ear. Normally such sounds can only be experienced fleetingly before they die off, but with spectral analysis by computer (i.e. a sort of...