Music, When Soft Voices Die...
⌊ Digital video for an electronic composition by Roderik de Man.
Music, when soft voices die... is an electronic composition for 8-track tape by Roderik de Man from 2004. In 2007 Roderik asked me to create video images to accompany his music, which was inspired by a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792 – 1822):
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
For the video images I also took insiration from the text, as well as from the painting "The Cremation of Shelley (16 August 1822)" by Louis-Edward Fournier. To adequately render the amount of detail contained in the music, and to properly represent my impression of the imagery in the poem, the video images were created using the Full High-Definition Video (HDV) standard. This made the exploration of minute levels of detail possible, something which is impossible with current digital video (DV) formats. The tranquil, serene pace gives the piece the qualities of a still-life painting, while the sometimes frenetic movement contributes to the feeling of transience – a theme recurrent in the work of Shelley.
Roderik writes:
The Institut de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges, commissioned me to compose an electronic work in their Studio Charybde in 2002. Most of my compositions in which electronics are involved are a combination of acoustical instruments with tape/cd. Music, when soft voices die... is the exception, in this piece I tried to exploit my past experience with electronic music to the fullest. Some of the material used refers to former pieces, for instance the word ‘music’ sung by soprano which was taken from a choral work.
In 2004 ‘Music, when soft voices die...’ won 1st prize in the Musica Nova, Prague competition.
Video stills
