Dancing in Water

I have been listening recently to music by Somei Satoh, particularly Sun - Moon (1994), three pieces for shakuhachi and koto.  His best known composition is probably 'Birds in Warped Time II' for piano and violin (see clip above), but I am intrigued by a more experimental piece, 'Echoes', created back in 1981 for the Mist, Sound and Light festival of Kawaji (it can be found on Volume 18 of the series Obscure Tape Music of Japan).  Here is how Satoh describes it:

'The venue was located at the Kawaji hot spring’s Ojika river valley, which was 50 meters wide and 200 meters long with an area of 7,000 square meters.  Eight large loudspeakers were set up on hills surrounding the stream, with music played through an octuple channel-tape system.  The combined length of cables connected with the loudspeakers exceeded one kilometers.  The audience was amidst dense artificial mists spreading upward from the bottom of the valley, laser light beams projected on the hill surface, and tape music that played in extremely low tone at full blast, echoing in the valley.  'Echoes' consists of the sonic ingredients of the three types of percussion instruments used in 'Emerald tablet' as well as my own voice.'

Satoh also engaged with nature in another more recent work, River, composed for the Kronos Quartet to accompany a dance piece by Eiko and Koma.  It was staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with the dancers emerging from shallow water bordered by two low banks.  The dance had previously been performed outdoors - in the Delaware River in 1995 and subsequently in various bodies of water.  A reviewer at that first performance wrote as much about the landscape as the dancers: 'Muted light shone through the water.  Across the river, the shoreline and trees glowed at times in a faint haze of light.'  That evening the performance ended in a sudden downpour: 'pocking the river, the rain made a river of the sky above.'  Reading this reminded me of a post I wrote here on Ben Greet's outdoor Shakespeare theatre, which toured America a century earlier - on one occasion the heavens opened during a performance of The Tempest.  I have embedded below two clips of Eiko and Koma: Dancing in Water: The Making of River, preparations for a performance in the landscape, and River: Proscenium Version, in which you can hear Satoh's score.

In the Field

I spent Friday and Saturday at In The Field, a symposium on the art and craft of field recording. During the two days we heard about a diversity of methods - from undersea hydrophone recordings made by Jana Winderen to impressions of the Hong Kong soundscape written for Salomé Voegelin's Soundwords project - and approaches ranging from the collective educational audio projects Claudia Wegener develops in Africa to the solo expeditions made by Simon Elliott to capture the intimate sounds of ospreys and peregrines.  Chris Watson came along briefly to talk about an installation he created at the London Children's Hospital in which patients remixed recordings he made on each of the seven continents.  He also mentioned In Britten's Footsteps, a collaboration with cellist Oliver Coates performed at Aldeburgh last week, which involved 'twenty speakers, split between the floor, head height and ceiling, developed to give an accurate spatial representation of the environment in which Watson had recorded the sounds' (The Liminal).  I think the weekend's highlight for me was a presentation by Christina Kubisch, whose Electrical Walks I wrote about here in 2010.  A recording she played of the beats made by different security gates sounded like the kind of music Chris Watson was making with Cabaret Voltaire all those years ago.

Reverberant flats on Peter Cusack's favouritesounds.org site

The most relevant talks from a landscape perspective were those that dealt with sound mapping, a subject I wrote about here last year, following a Wire Salon.  That event featured Ian Rawes, who modestly took on the job at this symposium of roving microphone holder, a role he could be seen as holding for the city itself in his work compiling the London Sound Survey.

• Peter Cusack started his talk with a quote from The Peregrine: 'the hardest thing to see is what is really there', and suggested that the same is true for sound.  He therefore focused on just one recording: children playing in a reverberant space created by a semi-circle of flats, which would surely leave its residents with "a particularly strong sonic memory".  The block of flats' shape reminded me of the garden designed to produce echoes that John Evelyn observed in Paris and I wondered if Cusack had sought it out deliberately for its acoustic properties.  But  he had been there as part of a project to document sounds under the flight path to Tegel Airport: every four minutes the children's voices have to compete with the noise of aircraft overhead.  This too will be form part of their memory of living in these flats, a sound that will disappear when the airport is eventually closed.

• Udo Noll, who has recorded sounds with Peter Cusack in Germany, talked about radio aporee, his global soundmap project. Various contributors had mentioned the importance of striving for the highest possible fidelity in their recordings but radio aporee is participative and welcomes all recordings of a reasonable standard.  Noll has now developed a radio aporee app, although he remains somewhat sceptical: "I don't like phones much and apps even less".  Is this augmented reality experience really progress?  Well, if artists don't work in this space, he argued, other commercial interests will.  Given that the non-mediated world is increasingly "a lost country", it seems better to have the option of coming upon a GPS-generated poem than some piece of corporate marketing.  This is also a way of inscribing a landscape without altering it - better, perhaps, to have the option of tuning in to a Simon Armitage stanza as you walk over the West Yorkshire moors, than coming across it carved into a rock.

• Francesca Panetta described the creation of a similar sound app, Hackney Hear.  This sadly doesn't stretch as far as Stoke Newington, otherwise I could hear it as I type this, but it can't be long before we get one - she has also created Soho Stories, Kings Cross Streetstories and, most recently, an app to accompany Rachel Lichetenstein's Diamond Street.  Users of Hackney Hear have actually preferred its field recordings to the interviews and commissioned texts (Iain Sinclair, inevitably).  The talk concluded with an introduction to The Guardian's new interactive panorama from the top of the Shard, which incorporates clips from The London Sound Survey.  As she zoomed out, the sound of swirling wind and distant sirens gave way to more immersive soundtrack.  She clicked on various sound samples across the city to show us how it worked, but time was running short.  The final sound we heard was 'Land of Hope and Glory' emanating from the Albert Hall and for a moment it seemed as if the whole symposium was about to end with an echo of the Last Night of the Proms.  

 

 The Guardian's interactive view from the top of the Shard

Finally I should mention that In the Field is also the title of a new book of interviews with field recordists, edited by Cathy Lane and Angus Carlyle, who co-organised the weekend's event with Cheryl Tipp.  I may have more to say about this in a future post. 

Daphnis and Chloe

There is a delightful sense of freedom in the lives of Daphnis and Chloe, as the young goatherd and shepherdess grow to love each other in the woods and fields of Lesbos.  Daphnis (Δάφνις) is named after the laurel bush and Chloe (χλόη) means the fresh green grass of spring.  They herd their animals together, share their food and milk and wine; Chloe picks stems of asphodel to make little cages for grasshoppers, Daphnis binds together slender reeds and learns to play the pan pipes.  In the summer they listen to the singing of rivers, the wind in the pines and the sound of the cicadas.  Two places in particular are special to them: a statue of Pan underneath a pine tree and, nearby, a cave dedicated to the Nymphs, from which a spring rises whose stream nourishes a meadow of soft grass. There is some hard work - for Chloe the wearisome job of churning milk - but after it is done the lovers have time to bathe, pick fruit and lie together kissing under an oak tree. 

Léon Samoilovitch Bakst, set design for Ravel's Daphnis et Chloë, 1912

Source: Wikimedia Commons

As you read about the passing of the seasons and the growing love of Daphnis and Chloe, it is easy to forget that the landscape Longus is describing is actually made up of the estates of rich men, living away in the city, and that Daphnis and Chloe are actually slaves.  Daphnis works on 'a very splendid property: it had mountains abounding in game, plains fertile in wheat, gentle slopes with vineyards, pastures with flocks, and a long stretch of shore where the sea broke on the softest sand.'  The last part of the novel, Book 4, begins with the news that the Master is returning to look over his property, including a large pleasure ground, containing cypresses, laurels, pines, and plane trees, fruit trees (apple, pear, pomegranate), beds of roses, lilies and hyacinths, and wild flowers: violets, narcissi, pimpernels.  In a description which reads like a blueprint for eighteenth century landowners, Longus writes that 'from there, a wide prospect opened over the plain and the sea beyond, and it was possible to see the peasants minding their flocks and herds, and the ships scudding across the bay - that view was another of the delights afforded by the pleasure-ground' (trans. Ronald McCall).

In the end, it turns out (to no great surprise) that Daphnis and Chloe are not the children of peasants - both had been exposed at birth by their real parents, suckled by a goat and a sheep, discovered and then brought up in the countryside.  But after they marry they return to their rustic idyll and own sheep and goats in great number.  They name their children Philopoeman ('friend to shepherds') and Agele ('herd').  It is a happy ending but to a modern reader it seems a shame that they go on to 'beautify' the Nymphs' cave with pictures and 'let Pan have a temple for his home instead of the pine tree'.  Such artifice is of course in keeping with the pastoral genre and indeed the entire novel is a kind of ekphrasis: its preface explains that Daphnis and Chloe is a story the author saw one day while he was out hunting in Lesbos, depicted in a painting, hanging in a grove sacred to the Nymphs.

Titian, The Three Ages of Man, c1512

It has been suggested that this may show scenes from Daphnis and Chloe

Source: Wikimedia Commons

There are other things I could say about landscape in relation to this book, but I'll confine myself to noting that there are three points in the story where aetiological myths are poetically retold to explain natural phenomena: the call of the wood pigeon, the origin of pan-pipes and the source of echoes. Chloe first experiences an echo while listening with Daphnis to the singing from a passing boat, down below them in a deeply curving bay.  Behind the level pasture where they stand there is a hollow coomb which receives the sounds and 'like a musical instrument' repeats them back again.  Chloe promises Daphnis ten kisses if he will tell her the origin of this phenomenon and so he begins his story, explaining that 'there are many kinds of nymphs - ash-tree nymphs, called Meliae, oak-tree nymphs, called Dryads, and nymphs of the marshes, called Heleioi. All are fair, all are makers of music.  Echo was born the daughter of one of these ... the Muses taught her to play the pan-pipes and the flute, to sing to the lyre and the cithara.'  She shunned mankind but Pan grew jelous and drove the shepherds and goatherds mad so that they tore her to pieces, still singing.  Earth gave these shreds of music shelter and now they are able to portray the sounds of people and animals, just as Echo once had done.  'When Daphnis ended his story, Chloe gave him not ten but ten-score kisses - for the echo had all but repeated what he said, as though to witness that he told no lie.'

Design for an artificial echo

In a previous post here I quoted an extract from Gilbert White's A Natural History of Selborne, which included a proposal: "Should any gentleman of fortune think an echo in his park or outlet a pleasing incident, he might build one at little or no expense. For whenever he had occasion for a new barn, stable, dog-kennel, or the like structure, it would be only needful to erect this building on the gentle declivity of an hill, with a like rising opposite to it, at a few hundred yards distance; and perhaps success might be the easier ensured could some canal, lake, or stream, intervene. From a seat at the centrum phonicum he and his friends might amuse themselves sometimes of an evening with the prattle of this loquacious nymph..."

Back in the late seventeenth century, John Evelyn had the same thought and provided a design in his unpublished Elysium Britannicum, "to instruct you how to produce an Artificial Echo and by an innocent magick & without superstition, to raise up & deprehend that vocal & fugitive Nymph." The illustration below is reproduced from John Dixon Hunt's Greater Perfections, in which it is used to illustrate the point that Evelyn, generally a proponent of natural gardens, was nevertheless happy to recommend artificial effects where nature had not provided them.


In John Evelyn's "Elysium Britannicum" and European Gardening Therese O'Malley describes this as a sketch of the artificial echo at the Tuileries in Paris. The excellent Gardenvisit.com includes an extract from Evelyn's diary from 4 February 1644: "I finished this day with a walk in the great garden of the Tuileries, marvelously contrived for privacy, shade, or company, by groves, plantations of tall trees, especially that in the middle, being of elms, the other of mulberries. It has a labyrinth of cypresses; not omitting the noble hedges of pomegranates, fountains, fish-ponds, and an aviary; but above all, the artificial echo, redoubling the words so distinctly; and, as it is never without some fair nymph singing to its grateful returns; standing at one of the focuses, which is under a tree, or little cabinet of hedges, the voice seems to descend from the clouds; at another, as if it was underground..."

Evelyn's experience in Paris is referred to in a 1995 survey of artificial soundscapes by Joseph Dillon Ford, 'From Vocal Memnon To The Stereophonic Garden, A Short History Of Sound And Technology In Landscape Design': He concludes: 'the creation of acoustically pleasant and appropriate landscapes represents a significant opportunity for those who recognize that a design which delights the eye but neglects the ear is likely to be as well-received as a handsomely costumed actor who mumbles, butchers or forgets his lines. An excerpt from Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism (part II, line 62) seems especially appropriate in this connection: "Tis not enough no harshness gives offence; / The sound must seem an echo to the sense." Those landscape architects who fully appreciate the historical role of sound as a design element essential to the creation of a strong sense of place and who accept the considerable technical, aesthetic, environmental, and legal challenges required to renew the soundscape, will have the distinct satisfaction of extending their art into new, ever-richer realms of poetic experience.'

One particular spot in the King's-field

Gilbert White was intrigued by echoes and in A Natural History of Selborne considered the means whereby 'any gentleman of fortune' could create the conditions for listening to echoes in his park by erecting an appropriate structure 'on the gentle declivity of an hill, with a like rising opposite to it... From a seat at the centrum phonicum he and his friends might amuse themselves sometimes of an evening with the prattle of this loquacious nymph.' The text here is from Letter XXXVIII, February 12^th, 1778 (the Latin at the end means ‘answering echo, who has yet to learn / To keep her peace when spoken to, or speak the first in turn’):

In a district so diversified as this, so full of hollow vales, and hanging woods, it is no wonder that echoes should abound. Many we have discovered that return the cry of a pack of dogs, the notes of a hunting-horn, a tunable ring of bells, or the melody of birds, very agreeably: but we were still at a loss for a polysyllabical, articulate echo, till a young gentleman, who had parted from his company in a summer evening walk, and was calling after them, stumbled upon a very curious one in a spot where it might least be expected. At first he was much surprised, and could not be persuaded but that he was mocked by some boy; but, repeating his trials in several languages, and finding his respondent to be a very adroit polyglot, he then discerned the deception [...]

All echoes have some one place to which they are returned stronger and more distinct than to any other; and that is always the place that lies at right angles with the object of repercussion, and is not too near, nor too far off. Buildings, or naked rocks, re-echo much more articulately than hanging wood or vales; because in the latter the voice is as it were entangled, and embarrassed in the covert, and weakened in the rebound.

The true object of this echo, as we found by various experiments, is the stone-built, tiled hop-kiln in Galleylane, which measures in front 40 feet, and from the ground to the eaves 12 feet. The true centrum phonicum, or just distance, is one particular spot in the King's-field, in the path to Nore-hill, on the very brink of the steep balk above the hollow cart way. In this case there is no choice of distance; but the path, by mere contingency, happens to be the lucky, the identical spot [....]

Should any gentleman of fortune think an echo in his park or outlet a pleasing incident, he might build one at little or no expense. For whenever he had occasion for a new barn, stable, dog-kennel, or the like structure, it would be only needful to erect this building on the gentle declivity of an hill, with a like rising opposite to it, at a few hundred yards distance; and perhaps success might be the easier ensured could some canal, lake, or stream, intervene. From a seat at the centrum phonicum he and his friends might amuse themselves sometimes of an evening with the prattle of this loquacious nymph; of whose complacency and decent reserve more may be said than can with truth of every individual of her sex; since she is

… quae nec reticere loquenti, Nec prior ipsa loqui didicit resonabilis echo.

The Housatonic at Stockbridge

Whenever I read about Charles Ives I find myself intrigued by the stories of his father George. As a seventeen year old, George’s musical talents were noticed by Ulysses S. Grant, who told Lincoln that the band of the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery led by Ives senior was the ‘best in the Army.’ Some of the ways in which George Ives went on to influence his son’s music are described here. A good example is the second of Ives’ Three Places in New England, ‘Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut’ which was inspired by an experiment of George Ives in which he arranged for his band and another one to march in opposite directions around the town square playing conflicting tunes. In Alan Rich’s book American Pioneers, there is a memorable image: ‘George Ives held a lifelong fascination with the notion of experimentation, spending long hours playing musical instruments across a nearby pond to study the nature of echoes…’

The third of Ives’ Three Places, ‘The Housatonic at Stockbridge’ records the memory of a walk that Ives took with his wife, Harmony, along the banks of the Housatonic River. As critic Alex Ross notes, ‘there are dissonances and ambiguities in the river’s flow. This is the New England landscape that generated not only Norman Rockwell’s small-town idylls but also the American apocalypse of “Moby-Dick.”’ There is a Robert Underwood Johnson poem that accompanies the music but more interesting perhaps is a brief note that Charles Ives himself wrote (quoted from a Charles Ives site):

… River mists, leaves in slight breeze river bed--all notes and phrases in upper accompaniment . . . should interweave in uneven way, riverside colors, leaves & sounds--not come down on main beat . . .

The Standing Stones of Stenness

Living in the city I don’t get to see many musicians interacting directly with the landscape, but reading reviews I get the impression that there are now few remote islands and windswept shores that don’t get a visit from passing sound artists – the twenty-first century equivalent of the late Romantic landscape painters. And yet despite all the activity, it seems it’s not always easy to make experimental music in hostile environments… even when the audiences are receptive, the landscapes can remain unresponsive. Take, for example, Biba Kopf’s description in The Wire of the Resonant Spaces events in Scotland this summer, featuring saxophonist John Butcher and sound artist Akio Suzuki. At the Standing Stones of Stenness, Butcher found the ancient stones difficult to work with: “the echo effects were definitely there… I tried short, piercing, rapid attacks on the tenor, and that was interesting for sounding out the stones. But I couldn’t see a way of working musically with that.” However, the high-pitched multiple tones of his amplified soprano produced the morning’s first breakthrough. “The surprising thing was that the previously reasonably silent sheep, who were gathered in the far corner of the Stones area, recognised qualities in those sounds and they started bleating,” smiles Butcher. Eventually things did come together, when Butcher stopped blowing and allowed the wind to play his amplified soprano (there is a photograph here).

The strong wind at the Standing Stones also did its best to drown out Akio Suzuki’s analopos (an acoustic echo instrument). However, he can be seen here playing it at another concert in Smoo Cave, Durness. The Resonant Spaces site has samples of Suzuki playing the analapos and stone flute. Suzuki’s flutes are actually fragments of landscape: naturally eroded stones (a posting on BLDGBLOG speculates that one day Europe’s fossilised reef could form a vast musical landform along similar lines). Suzuki has spent many years making sound art in the landscape using natural forces like the wind. For example, in 1988 he created a space in the mountains of Aminocho near Kyoto so as to spend an entire day listening to the sounds of nature. He built ‘two parallel walls of sun dried bricks which produce a unique echo effect similar to the famous “roaring dragon” walls at Tosuga Shrine in Nikko’ (quoted in David Toop’s Haunted Weather). In 1996 his contribution to the Berlin Sonambiente Festival was to walk the city and mark with a special listening symbol any spot where he heard an interesting sound, creating an alternative to the traditional itinerary. He made a similar work the following year, mapping the town of Enghien-Les-Bains to locate the areas where echoes were most resonant.