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image: a photographic collage of the HMV recording
Introduction
'Mobile Dawn In An Old World Garden' is a Parallel Music/sound
piece which takes as its raw material a 'found recording'
- a 78 rpm record of birdsong made eighty years ago in
the garden of renowned musician Beatrice
Harrison (one of the famous Harrison
sisters). It was at Harrison's suggestion that the
first
ever live BBC broadcast was made featuring the cellist
'dueting' with a nightingale in her garden in 1924. The
poetry of this narrative - and the fact that the record
appears to be a field recording of birdsong alone, has
inspired a piece in which Beatrice is hopefully present
by her absence and also provides a comment on representations
of and engagements with the natural world.
To construct the composition, the Harrison recording (HMV
B
2469) was digitised and sonic material from the B
side: 'Dawn In An Old World Garden' (2-9255) was processed
and made into a series of small sound elements or 'Sons'.
The new work - 'Mobile Dawn In An Old World Garden' -
is woven from the random selection and performance of
these Sons.
This work, premiered as part of the 'Anti-Parallel'
Egenis show 2007, consists of 208 (4x52) discrete, short sound
recordings derived from one side of a 78rpm gramophone record
entitled 'Dawn In An Old World Garden' (HMV B2469); these sound recordings
(or 'Sons') are then selected and played via the Parallel
Music method.
Here is an RMusic excerpt of the piece
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.
Structure
To make the new work, the entire 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). Inspired by Chris Cook's written work displayed at the Anti Parallel show, which playfully referred to the four bases of DNA: thymine, adenine, cytosine and guanine, these categories were entitled T A C and G:
• T or 'Trace' category, contains Sons derived purely from the noises
made by the 'scratches' of the record - the 'traces' of
the medium (example of T Son)
• A or 'Aggregate' category, contains Sons
which have been made from the birdsong recording and its
attendant 'scratches' (example of A Son)
• 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 of C Son)
• 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 of G Son)
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.
Paul Ramsay 16th March '07
(additional material added 2021)
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
Links
The
Harrison Sisters
The
Nightingale Broadcasts
First
outside broadcast of Beatrice Harrison and nightingales 1924
'The
cellist who enthralled the nation with her nightingale duet'
(BBC Radio 4)
'The
Cello and the Nightingale' - A Play by Patricia Cleveland Peck
The
Cello and Nightingale Sessions
Birdsong
and Music
Why
Birds Sing - a review with excerpts from David Rothenberg's
book
Nightingale
Appeal
Messiaen (see section 'Birdsong and the 1960s' for another approach to
the inclusion of birdsong in music) |
