Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Sheffield Hallam University
Foghorn Requiem
Foghorn Requiem is an enquiry into the complex interactions of sound, atmospheric physics, and landscape, and the combined impact on the experience of the listener. The work focused on the foghorn as a sound associated with time and distance that is uniquely shaped and encoded by the changing atmospheric conditions and innumerable echoes and reverberations of the particular geographic landscape through which it travels.
Commissioned by the National Trust and South Tyneside Council in 2011, Foghorn Requiem is a landscape-interactive musical composition for the Souter Lighthouse Foghorn, highlighting the passing of the foghorn from the British coastal landscape. Foghorn Requiem was performed by Souter Lighthouse foghorn, three onshore brass bands, and the ships horns of sixty vessels on the North Sea. Using custom built technology, sounds originating miles out to sea were remotely controlled and conducted to arrive in time with music performed on land.
Extending methodologies developed in Black Shoals and Most Blue Skies I+II, Foghorn Requiem involves atmospheric, acoustic and landscape interaction modelling to incorporate atmospheric conditions and the physics of distance, space, and landscape directly into the musical composition. Custom software simulates all of these effects, allowing the composer to work with a new musical element; incorporating the reverberation of the landscape as a timbral element in the composition. The final composition features synchronized, controlled acoustic blending of sounds originating miles apart, with conventional local sounds.
Foghorn Requiem was the flagship event for the Festival of The North East. It was viewed by an audience of more than 8000 and received considerable international and nationwide press and peer reviewed coverage. A subsequent video documentary is available online. It was funded by Arts Council England and Arts Council Denmark, and involved collaboration with more than twenty-five maritime and research organisations from the UK and abroad.
