Bmic announces its first release as Sound and Music: Recovery/Discovery,
a compilation CD/sound DVD based around one of the first major ‘surround
sound’ pieces in the UK, Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Chronometer.
Recovery/Discovery, a project funded by the British Council, brings
together a quadraphonic version of Birtwistle’s pivotal piece,
which was up until recently believed to have been lost, alongside
major electronic works by Jonathan Harvey, Javier Alvarez and Mira
Calix in surround format.
Today’s feature films, sports TV broadcasts and computer
games soundtracks all have surround sound that can be brought into
the living room, but previously the use of the direction of sounds
and their movement in space remained limited to specialised concert
set-ups and the limited circles of hi-fi buffs. Many successful
electronic works, such as the ones on this CD/DVD, were only released
on stereo CDs, even if they had elaborate spatial distribution in
their concert versions. Indeed the original quadraphonic version
of Chronometer had all but disappeared into oblivion until the Artistic
Coordinator of the Holland Festival, Lieven Bertels, initiated a
search for it in 2006:
Featuring sound recordings of Big Ben and the Wells clock from
London’s Science Museum, Chronometer was one of the most complex
electronic music endeavours of all time. The recovery operation
was the stimulus to ask what other works could complement Chronometer
in the context of being the first major ‘surround sound’
piece in the UK, and in particular focusing on its exploration of
the mechanisms of recording time.
Jonathan Harvey’s Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980) is a
quintessential part of the British electronic repertoire and a beautiful
tribute to the British choral tradition, its many cathedrals and
the bell ringing associated with them. The piece, which was made
at the IRCAM studios in Paris, sets up a dramatic interplay between
the deathly peeling bells (recorded at Winchester Cathedral) and
a lone chorister’s voice singing a text found on one of the
bells, revealing the contrasting forces of life versus death and
is, according to the composer, symbolic of the battle of the human
spirit to penetrate the intimidating world of the machine.
Although Javier Alvarez is a Mexican composer, it is his electronic
piece Temazcal, composed at the Royal College of Music in London
in 1984, that is perhaps his most successful to date, and one of
the party pieces of the ‘live+electronic’ repertoire
worldwide. The piece for surround tape and live maracas, inspired
by the likes of Stephen Montague and Trevor Wishart, shows an ear-opening
eclecticism and a fresh sound that even today sounds new and exciting.
For this release percussionist Joby Burgess made a new high resolution
surround recording of the live maracas part.
Mira Calix is a UK-based composer and DJ in the UK signed to the
WARP label. Her piece Nunu Wadudu (2008) uses the sounds of London
Sinfonietta players and a swarm of live insects, scratches, scrapings,
buzzing wings and crickets, to create a delicate yet refreshing
live+electronics surround soundscape that has received worldwide
public acclaim since its première.
Audio Samples (stereo mp3 format)
 Jonathan Harvey — Mortuos Plango Vivos
Voco
Harrison Birtwistle — Chronometer
Javier Alvarez — Temazcal
Mira Calix — Nunu Wadudu
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