You can hardly look at one wave, you always look at ‘waves’, notes Italian writer Italo Calvino in his novel Palomar. Something similar applies to the experience of the weather, says the American composer Christopher Cerrone: “The weather is not a moment, you can’t insulate it. The weather, and certainly extreme weather, is monolithic, all -embracing.” Cerrones Beaufort Scales For eight women’s voices and electronics, with video projections by artist Hannah Wasileski, is about the experience of extreme weather. The Lorelei Ensemble brings the European premiere on Saturday 5 July, as part of the Festival The Big Sing in Haarlem (see deployment).
Lorelei Ensemble was founded in Boston in 2007 by conductor Beth Willer. Their CD recording of Beaufort Scales Was nominated earlier this year for a Grammy Award. Cerrone and Willer say in a zoom conversation that they are very looking forward to the Haarlem version: “We have now done the piece seven times, but there was always something, with the video or with the exposure. This will be the first uncompromized Implementation, “says Cerrone.
By the way, if you want to insult Beth deeply, Cerrone says, then you have to call Lorelei a “choir”: “It’s a vocal ensemble.” Willer laughs around, but he is right. The individuality of the eight separate voices is paramount at Lorelei, as with a string quartet. “What is often lacking in music for Treble Voices [hoge stemmen] Is research into the colorist aspect, the individual colors. We select our composition assignments there. Chris has expanded our vocal palette with all kinds of shades and variations, it is a very rich sound world, “says Willer.
Not far away
When they started the project, in 2019, ‘extreme weather’ was something that took place far away, says Willer. No matter how bad it was: “No one I knew had to do with it. Now I don’t know anyone who has not had to deal with it, also in the US.” The title of Loreleis concert program, ‘Look Up’, is an explicit call to look beyond your own comfort. You can also see a nod to it Don’t look upthe satirical film parabel about climate denial.
Cerrone outlines a problem with ‘committed’ or political art: the chance that climate deniers come to a concert by the Lorelei Ensemble is not that great. You quickly preach for your own parish, and it fits for that. Instead of a manifesto about the climate crisis, he therefore decided to make music about something very concrete: the Unheimliche, recognizable experience of extreme weather.
“During a stay as a composer in Residence in Oregon in 2018 I experienced forest fires from close by. That was very intense, not at all abstract, and I wanted to document that experience in my work.” The entrance found Cerrone in a surprising place: in the Windkracht classification that was drawn up in 1805 by the Irish Admiral Francis Beaufort. “It is a great text, a collection of haikus in which he describes what the wind causes at a certain strength.” The usual Dutch translation of the Beaufort scale is rather dry, in contrast to the original: ‘Whistling Heard in Telegraph Wires; Umbrellas Used with Difficulty‘(Wind force 6).
Difficult time
Beaufort Scales Describes a clear arch, from wind force 0 to 12. The intensification does not so much in volume, but in density, intensity and electronic distortion. To prevent the work from becoming predictable, Cerrone added four spoken ‘interludes’, with weather descriptions of writers Melville, Scott Fitzgerald and Anne Carson and from the Bible: “It is clear that we live in a difficult time and I wanted to show how it was spoken about the weather in other times.”
Cerrone built an intriguing voice architecture, based on speech rhythms and repeated patterns, in which the audience is immersed. Some pieces sound gritty, others have a serenity that reminds us of the vocal music of David Lang. ‘Step 10′ is a manic canon on the words’Very High Waves‘, very precisely sung, with almost robot -like effect. For example, the border between acoustic singing and the electronic layer of samples and live operation. Cerrone praises Sound Engineer Ross Wightman as “an engineer with the sensitivity of a musician”: “Without Ross this project would not be possible.”