Above is a video of the original HMV
record 'Dawn In An Old World Garden' being played
(please note that this is not my copy) - many thanks to Dave (78Man
at YouTube.com)
Background
The gramophone record that provides the basis for this PMusic
composition was made in 1927 in the garden of cellist Beatrice
Harrison who three years earlier had made the first
live BBC broadcast in the same garden in Oxted 'duetting'
with nightingales. This unfolding narrative fascinated me as
I began to research a disc I had bought some 15 years ago (mainly
out of curiosity as to its original purpose). Although this
particular recording features birdsong alone, I feel that Beatrice
is present by her absence in the new composition - it is certainly
dedicated to her.
My thinking about this piece was also amplified by conversations
with Martin
Prothero - whose practice inspired me to make a sound work
that is influenced by the notion of animal tracks or traces,
and Chris
Cook - whose textual exploration of DNA
and the concept of antiparallel
also informed my construction of 'Mobile Dawn', particularly
in terms of its performance.
A scan of the label of HMV
B2469
Structure
To make the new work, the Harrison recording (HMV B
2469) was digitised to the highest possible quality (at
Stanley
Productions in London) and sonic material from the B side:
'Dawn In An Old World Garden' (2-9255) was
extracted, and in some cases processed, to give four categories
of sound (52 Sons in each).
Following on from the inspiration of Chris Cook's written work,
which playfully refers to the four bases of DNA: thymine, adenine,
cytosine and guanine, these categories were entitled T
A C and G:
•
The
T or 'Trace'*
category contains Sons derived purely from the noises
made by the 'scratches' of the record - the 'traces' of
the medium (example)
•
The
A or 'Aggregate' category contains Sons
which have been made from the birdsong recording and its
attendant 'scratches' (example)
•
The
C or 'Carillon' group has birdsong from
which I have tried to subtract the background noise of
the record — 'scratch'-free versions of the dawn
chorus (example)
•
The
G or 'Garden' Sons have been re-pitched
and modified to give sounds suggestive perhaps of rain,
forests, exotic beasts - other geographies, situations
and locations (example)
In the sounding of this piece, at any one time a particular
performance method and its duration (or 'Net')
are chosen by indeterminate means. Some Nets give periods of
silence, some take their cue from the antiparallel
notion and play simultaneously paired of sounds from either
the T and A, or C and G categories. Some play four channels
of sounds chosen from the entirely same category, others from
all categories.
Resonance
It is my hope that these sounds blend into and merge with their
surroundings, occasionally 'troubling the air' or inadvertently
duetting with exterior bird calls, to play games with represented
space and time via a recording originated over eighty years
ago.
* see Nattiez 1990 below for more on
the notion of 'the trace'
Paul
Ramsay 16th March '07
Click
the above image to hear an online
version of my composition
'Mobile Dawn In An Old World Garden'
References
Cleveland-Peck, Patricia, (1985), 'The Cello and the Nightingale
- the Autobiography of Beatrice Harrison', John Murray Ltd.
Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, trans. by Carolyn Abbate, (1990), 'Music
and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music', Princeton University
Press
Rothenberg, David, (2005), 'Why Birds Sing - A Journey into
the Mystery of Birdsong', Basic Books
