Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
Guildhall School of Music & Drama
"Body of Water, for solo tenor, choir, brass quintet and organ" (commissioned by the John Armitage Memorial)
"Body of Water" investigated how new poetic, narrative and sonic possibilities might emerge from the familiar resources of choir, brass and organ. The research context for pursuing this goal was the John Armitage Memorial (JAM) which commissions works exclusively for this combination.
The research process started with the composer/researcher, together with writer Simon Christmas, exploring both musical and poetic strategies for realising the research aim. The metaphor of water was soon agreed with the intention of creating a musico-poetic structure that would immerse the audience, submerging it in text and music, creating for them a visceral experience far distant from the reverential tone one might predict from organ, choir and brass.
The timing was fortunate: the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic was looming and a fund-raising swim across the Bosphoros by a JAM Trustee had just taken place – with happier results. The swimmer provided verbatim text recording his experience and this was incorporated into the research process, helping to shape the narrative strand of the research’s goal: the way an event is captured in memory and how layers of interpretation, story-telling and myth then quickly accrete.
The narrative trajectory of "Body of Water" was then established as a backwards journey through layers of memory to an original moment of engulfing experience. The musical articulation of this saw the work starting as a song cycle before gradually moving toward the audience’s final immersion by sound as texture, an experience brought about, in part, by distributing the musical forces into different parts of the venue.
"Body of Water" was commissioned by the John Armitage Memorial with funds from the PRS Foundation. It was premiered at St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, in March, 2012 and subsequently performed at St Nicholas Church, New Romney. It is published by Peters Edition, London.
