Lorelei is an EP of music quite different from anything on the earlier Like Water and Like Wind. It contains three tracks:
• Lorelei (approx 4 mins)
• Brancusi (approx 6 mins)
• RUAH: Meditations on the Breath of God (approx 8 mins)
F L Dunkin Wedd writes:
The first two tracks use musique concrète – music made not by instruments, but from recorded sounds of various kinds* while RUAH is for choir and organ.
Lorelei was completed in January 2015: three female voices speak words and phrases over the sound of lapping water. The water sound was recorded near the home of my beloved aunt, Noël Carr who died in December 2014; it is therefore partly a loving tribute to her.
In Brancusi (2008) a single vocal line floats above a backing of industrial and other sounds. It’s in honour of one of my favourite sculptors, Constantin Brancusi, and sung here by one of my favourite mezzos, Susan Legg.
RUAH (2006) is for choir and organ, mainly conventional but using some unusual vocal techniques at the beginning. It sets texts from Tanakh, Ketuvim, Koran and New Testament, and focuses on ‘the Breath of God’ – a concept common to Judaism, Islam and Christianity. And it’s a thanksgiving for the gift of singing.
* Pierre Schaeffer described musique concrète thus: “Instead of notating musical ideas on paper… and entrusting their realization to well-known instruments, the question was to collect concrete sounds, wherever they came from, and to abstract the musical values they were potentially containing…”
Performers:
Lorelei uses the voices of Helen Chater, Mary Rae and Carole Howlett
Brancusi is performed by Susan Legg, mezzo-soprano
RUAH is by The Tamesis Consort, Jonathan Wikeley and Martyn Noble