Eight New Songs for a Mad Kingdom

What do I want to say, and what is the simplest way to say it?

This piece has been in transformation since January 2021, when we all met for the first time to start our rehearsals. 

- Corona delay time of about 2 years - 

Now we meet again, in the same location but a very different time. 

Of course a lot has changed, and continues to alter everyday.

It began with the animal research.

Collecting all of the most delicious facts and phenomena about the animals, their perceptions and the way that we (humans) perceive the way that they (animals) communicate with one another. 

We will never fully understand their language - but I appreciate the attempt of building a better understanding -

It may be one of our most beautiful human traits. 

At the end of our workshop session in 2021, I brought everyone a copy of Alvin Lucier’s wonderful book ‘Reflections’.

Alvin was a great mentor of mine through my studies at Wesleyan University, where he taught until 2011. While our musical and performative aesthetics are very different, we always met eye to eye when marveling at the phenomena of our everyday lives. 

The tonal reflections of a concrete corridor between adjacent buildings.

The erratic patterns of a moth enticed by a bright light.

The way that guests at a party always wind up in the kitchen.

In December 2021, Alvin passed away. 

In an interview with Douglas Simon in ‘Reflections’, Alvin talks about his piece THE RE-ORCHESTRATION OF THE OPERA ‘BENVENUTO CELINI BY HECTOR BERLIOZ, in which Alvin uses his own voice to filter a recording of Berlioz’ opera. 

Through repeated processes of filtration, the original Berlioz piece is transformed - “ It’s like alchemy-” says Alvin in the interview, “ it would take many operations of the same thing to produce a new result.”

I love this idea of sonic alchemy.

To find a correspondence between two different artistic voices - allowing simple processes of combination and translation to bring about a new creative expression which exists as the alchemical result of these voices.

This is the Mad Kingdom, and the Eight Songs which lie within its domain.

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“Talking Machine’ is a reference to Alvin’s “THE ONLY TALKING MACHINE OF IT’S KIND IN THE WORLD” - 

a singular voice is multiplied via a delay line and a Ship-like Totem is built in the honor of a whale. 

‘The Reprise of Quasimodo’ refers to ‘QUASIMODO THE GREAT LOVER’ which sets up a sonic relay, placing speakers and microphones in different rooms and sending the sound from one location over the greatest distance possible. With the development of wireless technology, we can transmit sound over even greater distances since we are no longer restricted by the length of the speaker cable. As a source material, we chose the song of a species of Blue Whale which was discovered at the bottom of the Indian Ocean during the Corona lockdowns, when oceanologists were able to plunge their microphones down into silent waters - finally unobstructed by the noise of giant cargo ships. 

We began our transmssions outside the Sogar Theater, sending the whales song to two populated tunnels along Langstrasse, then moved to the Opera house and Lake in the city center of Zürich, a tiny airport landing strip in Hausen am Albis, Zug Hauptbahnhof (Alvin spent a lot of time working and visiting friends in Zug) and finally transmitting the whales song into the bottom of a stone well in the middle of an ancient ruin. 

“Birds on Windy Corners” is a combination of Alvin’s “WORDS ON WINDY CORNERS” and “BIRD AND PERSON DYNING’ - a trio of birds have a conversation center stage - first in “human time” and then translated into “bird time” which is significantly slower, allowing our human ears to hear the melodies we normally miss because the song goes by too quickly for us to hear the details. The performers create an “electric wind” and finally a horse emerges to invite the bird to dinner, causing sonic shadows inside our ears. 

“Pure Waves, Pendulums, and Pachyderms” uses subsonic frequencies to resonate the head of a snare drum- it is a tip of the hat to ‘ MUSIC FOR PURE WAVES, BASS DRUMS AND ACOUSTIC PENDULUMS.’ 

A pendulum (wooden dowel) is placed onto a snare drum head which is placed onto a subwoofer sending pure waves directly into the cavity of the drum. The pendulum translates the subsonic pure waves into a series of rhythmic taps - much in the way that elephants send seismic messages to their herd by stomping into the ground. In this piece we extend the pure waves into the audience, so they can also receive the messages and join our herd.

In “Umwelt I & II” we use dry ice as a metaphor for our deteriorating polar caps. As industries continue to bombard our Umwelt with unsustainable materials, the planet literally shrieks.

“Outlines of Conch and Coral” traces the sonic diffraction patterns of a conch shell - the performers use the microphone as an acoustical pencil, tracing the shell’s outline and finding spots where the high frequencies are either dominant or non-existent based on the diffraction caused by the shape of shell. In a video performance of  Alvins work “OUTLINES OF PERSONS AND THINGS” Alvin and Robert Ashley are standing inside a large canoe - Alvin, dressed for a day out on the lake, casting his fishing rod into the high frequency waves. So the large conch shells seemed like a perfect re-staging of this acoustic phenomena!

At the end, the performers push the shells to the front of the stage, and as they move forward, the sound coming from inside their caverns, transform from fireworks blasting, houses burning, and ships sinking, to three different recordings of a coral reef (a variation on GENTLE FIRE). 

When a coral reef is unhealthy the aquatic life that makes the reef their home, decide to abandon their lodgings, expediting the poor health of the reef itself. Oceanographers are trying to repair damaged coral reefs by playing recordings of a healthy reef through submerged speakers. The recordings of the healthy coral reef entices the usual inhabitants of the reef to return to their damaged homes and to help repair the entire coral ecosystem.

The last two songs bring us back into the purely acoustic realm. 

In “Termites and Treehoppers” we hear the sounds of an infestation of the biggest symbol of Western Classical Music, the pianoforte.

Finally in “Vespertilionidae” we try to track down our Whale Ship Totem through methods of echolocation.

This cycle of eight songs may be seen as a creative alchemy; a meeting of voices and ideas from both the human realm and the animal kingdom.

The acoustic phenomena displayed prominently in Alvin Lucier compositions, the scientific research of animal communication, the slow nearly imperceptible motion of a Robert Wilson play and the haunting monochromatic glow of a Film Noir.

All simmering together on the stage of a small black box theater-

for us to witness together. 

mit Jessie Marino, Oliver Meier, Simone Keller

Komposition: Jessie Marino

Regie: Philip Bartels

Instrumentenbau und Bühnenmechanik: Oliver Meier

Tontechnik: Philip Tschiemer

Lichttechnik: Yahya Hazrouka

Produktion: ox&öl in residence am sogar theater