Output details

Farewell to this land's cheerless marshes

This work is representative of an approach to notation and performance developed in an ongoing series of text scores developed and devised with the performers. This work examines the physical relationship between performers and their instruments and privileges the unintentional sound materials produced by physical contact with the instruments rather than the intentional sound materials. For example in this context the sound of a key striking the body of the saxophone preceding the performance of a pitch is of greater interest than the sound of the pitch produced.

Farewell to this land’s cheerless marshes was written for [rout] and OKEANOS and was first performed at the Sound and Music Cutting Edge Concert Series (2009) with a subsequent performance at Sonic Art Oxford (2010). The work was developed in a series of workshops that explored the nature and variety of timbres available in the two ensembles from the koto to the electric guitar. The text score provides information regarding performance activities including a list of sounds that the performer is actively seeking out:

distortion - beating - extraneous sound - noise - dirt - feedback - thresholds – liminal space - micro-tones - glissandi - scrapes - clicks - squeaks - rumbles - singing and playing - bowing the body of the instrument - grating – cracking – multi-tasking – mechanical sound – find the edge of a sound – change your mind

These sound materials were discussed during devising as were the nature of articulation of each of the sounds.

Each instrument was fitted with a contact microphone (AKG C411L) so that the sounds of the performer’s contact with the instruments could be amplified and routed through a series of effects pedals so that the sounding result mixed acoustic, amplified ambient sound, and amplified contact sounds processed with a range of pedals.