Document title Ciclo Shakespeare - Since Brass nor Stone
Subtitle Shakespeare Cycle
Date of Composition · 2007
Date 2007/Sep/13
Performer(s)
Frances Lynch (soprano), Paul Bull (electronics)
Organization/Event Miso Music Portugal - Música Viva 2007 Festival
Venue French-Portuguese Institute
Town Lisbon
Country Portugal
Author of the Text William Shakespeare
Title of Poem or Text Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
Notes
“Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.”
In Since brass nor Stone the proximity between the acoustic and the electronics world – so characteristic of the previous cycle – is defined by the landscape of the electronics that background and embraces the dramatic sense that Shakespeare lends in the sonnet. The dialogue between the solo voice and the transformed recorded voice is always there creating a single sound matrix. The soprano part creates a space and harmonic configuration that is completed by the sound field of the electronics. The intersection points between electronics and the voice are frequent, marking the key moments of the formal geography of the piece.
The emotional reading of the original text led me to a very concrete perception of a possible musical discourse taking into account the necessary process of mediation between the dimensions of time and space.
The material developed, essentially, through the expansion of its concrete musical characteristics, contributing, from the beginning, to the expressive quality or identity, which will be present in the final achievement of the work. In this case, the unity principle does not search a super control; on the contrary, it tries to create nuclei, formants, which will manifest themselves differently as they interact with each other.
