A Self-Portrait

This paper explores so-called plunderphonic creative practices, with plunderphonics broadly here defined as music made from other music . More specifically, this paper considers how such practices may be conceptually and technically developed through and against facets of contemporary musical consumption. Within this consumption context, streaming platforms dominate. Spotify, for example, currently claims to hold approximately 100 million tracks in its library, conservatively equating to roughly 570 years of total listening time. In many ways, such a scenario is an emblem of music within the context of the economics of late transnational capitalism, characterised as it is by the recurring themes of superabundance, hyperaccessibility and access-over-ownership. This paper argues (as many have before) that changing facets of musical consumption through time have afforded parallel developments in plunderphonic practices and moves to consider how such practices might begin to be conceptually and/or technically developed within the context described above. Using the author’s recent composition as a means of discussion – A Self-Portrait (Couperin) , for piano and fixed-media audio (2022–2023) – this paper discusses the beginnings of a possible compositional approach for and within the situation described, examining both how musical superabundance can be engaged with as an artist resource and the conceptual spaces revealed when one attempts to do so.