Continuity Through Contrast in Rebecca Saunders’ Fury II (2009) Sonic Saturation, Gesture, and the Composite Instrument

Rebecca Saunders’ Fury (2005) and Fury II (2009) embody an aesthetics of saturation, tension, and fragility. While Fury compresses these qualities into the solitary body of the double bass, Fury II reimagines them in an ensemble, transforming the soloist’s gestures into the nucleus of a composite instrument. This dissertation examines how form, resonance, and gesture coalesce in Fury II to produce continuity-through-contrast, where oppositional parameters—percussive effects versus Klangfarbenmelodie, low resonance versus fragile sustain, and instability versus saturation—propel the work without arriving at formal resolution or structural closure.Across the entire piece, these relationships operate as three major groups of contrasts, each sustaining tension through different musical dimensions. The first centers on the opposition between percussive effects and Klangfarbenmelodie; the second on the contrast between low pulsating resonance and fragile high sustain; and the third on the interplay of gestures, tension, and saturation. Together, they form a dynamic field in which continuity arises not from