Post 8: Listening Response

This week, I had the pleasure of reading Polly Teale’s Mermaid, a dramatic production soon to be staged by Luther College, a project in which the composition studio is excited to take part. I also listened to another extended work of electronic music, Michel Chion’s Requiem, a piece for which I am excited to share my experience.

Polly Teale’s Mermaid involves some parallel narratives. One is a modern American family stricken with financial uncertainty, and the other is a fantastical world of mermaids conjured by Blue, the daughter of said American family. Differentiated which world the narrative follows should be an important part of our considerations in the sound environments we create. In terms of specific sounds, the play practically calls for certain sounds to follow the creative imaginings of Blue–the sounds of fisherman, of violence and war, of time ticking on. One moment early in the show also calls for a live portrayal of the FaceTime sequence, which of course will require the appropriate sound effects, and perhaps prolonged in some way to accommodate a larger span of time. In general, I’m excited to begin working on this project; I find the play harboring a lot of potential for the making of rich sound worlds.

Equally important, I listened to Chion’s Requiem in the electronic studio, and unlike in previous assignments with the lights turned on as per Prof. Joyce’s recommendation. In stark contrast with tradition, the Requiem opens with an ear-blistering brightness, not the humbling darkness normally associated with a requiem mass. It is the sharp weight of a laser, not the distant levity of light that Chion imagines in the “lux aeternam.” The work proceeds to include large sequences of spoken words, from all walks of life–male and female, young and old. It is as though this requiem is for all of us. Rather that the regulated fire of hell–the assurance of justice, we hear in the “Dies Irae” the screams of confusion from deeper within the soul.

Of the ten movements, I was most intrigued by the last, entitled “Libera Me.” Appropriately, Free me from this aberration of sound, was indeed my first thought. I felt in one moment like I was in a hospital bed in my terminal minutes–accompanied by the inorganic sounds of equipment, and a dry voice in my head begging to be let go. In the next, I was slurping the last couple spoonfuls of a lackluster stew. It had a warmth and a gooiness that relieved me from the prior moment, but left me in perhaps greater hunger as the Chion’s Requiem can to a close.
Entranced by this music, I let the CD keep playing after the Requiem was finished, and what I heard continued to shock and fascinate me. The indigestion, a running motif in Variations, and the moaning sounds which permeate throughout Nuit Noire, give the impression of a hunger which lingers from the Requiem. Whereas I’ve always thought of great music as filling a cavity in my being, these artistic choices bring me closer to the experience of loss. It’s not beautiful, or wondrous, or nuanced in the same way as the Mozart Requiem is, but it conveys a message equally, if not more, intimate and profound–a closeness which is in fact as uncomfortable as hearing the indigestion or groans emanating from one’s own inner hunger.