Month: November 2024

In creating the music and sound design aspects for my audio paper, I decided that recording a real church organ was imperative in informing the meaning of the text. Thankfully, I have access to my local church and the key for its organ due to my employment history. During quarantine, I spent a lot of time playing the organ there alone, and in light of this project, I thought it should return to it.

St. Michael the Archangel, in Penhurst, East Sussex was built in 1390, far before the period of history that I focus on. That fact, combined with its rural isolation makes it less connected to active colonisation. I think in my text I will frame it as more of a precursor, part of the culture of the church; a staging ground.

In the church, long reverb tails are created from the organ positioned at the back. Alongside the organ, I recorded room tones in the space, to accompany the narration. I had considered for a long time recording the narration itself in the church, to further situate the audio paper within the culture of its making. However, due to transport concerns and being able to closely monitor recording, I settled on constructing it. Rendering the appearance of speaking in the church instead. The building is not solely mine, people are free to enter and pray, I did not want to dominate the space. Ontologically, also, I felt uneasy about reciting a diatribe about the cruelties of the church in a church. Less for any kind of religious reasoning, but more to avoid a sneering, puerile shock value quality. To do that alone would feel uncomfortable and weird.

Unlike the organs I discuss in the audio paper, Penhurst’s is electric. But with the diffusion of a few speakers, the emulation of pipes is very convincing. Listening to the recordings, I am reminded how it’s an instrument that is almost impossible to replicate through a sound file or physical media. It should primarily be experienced within the spaces they occupy. This brings me to the theoretical studies of Paul C. Jasen’s 2016 book, Low End Theory: Bass, Bodies and the Materiality of Sonic Experience.

In the book, there is a distinctly pertinent section referring to the church organ and its frequencies in manipulating sacred sonic space. He writes about listener perceptions of the organ, how it ‘would have also confronted non-participants and non-believers – those not in the church but in its proximity, permeated by modulations – with a striking, perceptual encounter combined with the promise/threat of something altogether more transformative ‘inside’.’ I believe this will prove useful in critically examining the organ’s affect when situated within the church, how that affects the community surrounding it. The symbiotic relationship between the organ, the church and the requirement of people to bodily experience it.

I used the Zoom H1n to record the organ, piano and room tones in the church. Previous experiences with recording this particular organ proved frustrating; I had used an AKG C451b, but the microphone placement became critical to the quality of sound. In the case of this project, extended time spent reworking inadequate recordings, especially when I am recording on-site with limited time, I saw fit to use the simpler Zoom to capture the larger picture.

I also created a number of recordings using the church piano. Unrelated to my organ thesis, yet closely related to the history of worship song, I felt it fitting to record this instrument as I was adopting the entire building and everything it contained as an instrument, in a sense.

Bibliography:

Jasen, P. C. (2016) Low End Theory: Bass, Bodies and the Materiality of Sonic Experience. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

In this post, I detail an instance of chasing valuable research material. In my key text, Phil Dodds’ 2023 book Music and the Cultural Production of Scale, a text by the son of Christian Ignatius Latrobe, John Antes is referenced. I sensed that this could provide a unique opportunity for counterpoint in my audio paper, to contrast the colonial father with the son, revealing a critical point about the mythologic language surrounding the church organ enabling its domineering presence.

I searched Google Scholar for John Antes Latrobe, first finding mention of him in Anna Peak’s 2010 dissertation, The Music of the Spheres: Music and the Gendered Mind in Nineteenth-Century Britain. However, it was only a reference in the footer. Still, this gave me more complete details surrounding the title and work of J. A. Latrobe that could enhance my search.

Quite miraculously, I found a scan of the very text I was seeking to reference, rather than an adjacent source: The Music of the Church Considered in its Various Branches, Congregational and Choral: An Historical and Practical Treatise for the General Reader, from 1831. I will assert that it is not for the general reader. It is for the most avowed enthusiast. Yet, a very specific section about the organ’s player’s power over a congregation was referenced in Dodds’ work, perhaps I could expand on that here.

The irony being that the exact page referenced, that I had hoped to expand upon and read further context of, had the only scanning error in the document across it. Finally finding a pdf of the complete book, I was able to read and cite the book in my audio paper’s bibliography.

Ultimately, I managed to verify the publishers through a portrait of them in the archives of the National Portrait Gallery. All this is to say, I am struck by the relative difficulty in referencing truly historical works. Online resources are often inaccessible, and it demonstrates to me the survival rate for information is often uncertain. Thankfully, in this case I was able to extrapolate upon the key text, which provided me with a core critical point of examination in my audio paper.

This was a heavy lecture. Rarely are we presented with artmaking borne out of mortal necessity. In Dr. Helen Anahita Wilson’s lecture she discussed sonic ways of being and knowing the human body, uniting the fields of sound studies, music and health. As she stated, “my body always takes the lead and shows me the way”, her work explores corporeal acoustemology.

Her PhD piece, TCH-P, was inspired by the cocktail prescribed to her for breast cancer treatment, iatrogenic experience as the enabling element in a challenge of the illness narrative. The South Indian konnakol, recited while gesturally expressing with a hand that clearly showed an IV drip inserted. She clarified that it was made retrospectively, after her treatment had ended, but it was still starkly convincing. It was a very moving piece. A quiet moment of solitude and positivity amid chaos and a health nightmare. The chant itself was very grounding, slowly morphing, fragmenting. Changing in tone, pitch and speed.

I recognised the rhythm from the wonderfully unfunny Tim Heidecker, Fred Armisen and John C. Reilly comedy show Moonbase 8, that no-one has watched or cares about. I feel ashamed, taking a sidebar about this delightful, mediocre fluff show during a blog post about cancer and life or death. Yet, personal context helped align me with the work itself.

In the other major project she showed, Linea Naturalis, Wilson affirms that we are all bioelectrical beings. Alongside Dr Sandra Knapp, President of the Linnean Society, she studied plants forming the basis for chemotherapy drugs. I think with time, I had lost the conception that plants were still so critical to medicine manufacturing. I found that mild realisation reassuring, much like those visiting the oncology gardens Wilson referenced. A grounding of the often synthetic-feeling medical world in the earthen reality is stabilising in a way. My fiancé was diagnosed in 2022 with Type 1 diabetes, and through GP visits, varying hardcore medications, and finally regular insulin injections, the nature of the human body as an ecosystem became apparent to me. Both how resilient, adaptable, yet fragile it is. A switch can unknowingly flip, and your body decides to try and kill you. From collecting data in the Chelsea Physics Garden, to creating the music, Wilson collated bioelectricity, biosignals, contact mic recordings, and then genetic data and biological analysis. She interpreted drones from genetic data, and frequency readings sent through tape echo. The Madagascan periwinkle as a harp, the devil’s trumpet compared to the brass of Amos Miller. I found the reinterpretation of plants used for chemotherapy treatment as music to be played to those undergoing that treatment to be poetic and meaningful.

It’s very very hard for me to comment on artworks informed by, drawn out by, manifested by near-death experiences. They change the way the brain sees the world, and to discuss taste feels tasteless. I have often found the artistic interpretation of sonification dubious, but I think that has more to do with perceptions of authentic sound. What I appreciated about Wilson’s work and presentation, was her expressed emphasis of the creative intervention occurring in the handoff between initial data and final music.

This also relates to her study of the Krankenhausfunk, or hospital radio. She described the absurdity of hearing the Bee Gees’ ‘Staying Alive’ during her treatment in the production of TCH-P, perhaps Linea Naturalis seeks to amend that, or enhance the experience. Soothing, plant-derived tones to calm the patient.

In the production phase of my audio paper, I have been drawn away from abstraction as an aesthetic device. I love abstraction in art, but I’m wary of deploying it intentionally in a work intended to convey a thesis. My mind is having trouble distinguishing the professorial and the artful, and my immediate instinct is to set a spoken essay to sound, rather than assemble an argument out of sound. I’m concerned that this appears facile, or not as aurally dimensional as something more dynamic.

Ken Burns is a documentary filmmaker famous for his lengthy works largely focusing on American history. His first, and most significant project, The Civil War from 1990, connected with me as I formulated how to proceed with developing this audio paper.

The now-iconic, classic example of television documentary miniseries concerns the American Civil War, comprised of much contemporary photography to illustrate the events. It’s a very immersive, early example of styles of documentary filmmaking that quickly became the standard, yet this series is so distinct. In some respects, I envision my audio paper functioning in a similar sense; like a documentary film with the screen off. However, the academic validity of a film like The Civil War, or the nostalgic tone that Burns often is guilty of indulging in, gives me pause. As David Harlan (2003, pp. 170) astutely states;

‘And then there is the matter of his presentism: Burns is not really interested in the past at all – or rather, he is interested in the past only insofar as he can make it reflect and dramatize his own interior emotional life (and, as it turns out, the interior emotional lives of tens of millions of other Americans). But we academic historians are interested in the past, if not ‘in and for itself’ than certainly as something more substantial than a reflecting device in which we can meditate upon our own sensibilities.’

In many ways, I feel this is the immediate danger of the audio paper medium. The urge to acknowledge the self and our partial relationship to what we choose to present, how we present it, is unavoidable. Once that academic rigour borrows some of formatting of art while distinguishing itself from it, what is the result? Is history truly solid? My instinct tells me no. Salomé Voeglin described it to us as the listener is ‘invited to reach meaning’. I believe striking this balance will be critical in my paper.

By chance, I happened to catch myself watching Dan Snow’s BBC documentary How the Celts Saved Britain, and feeling uncomfortable. I usually avoid this kind of BBC programming, but the imagery of the island of Iona and talk of ancient Ireland (an ancestral home of mine) immobilised me in that after dinner stupor.

However, as the narrative progressed I increasingly detected the colouring of history by dominant narratives. I have always felt it thorny and cringeworthy to prod Christianity as a culturally destructive force, so it’s odd to find myself working on a project concerning that. I reject the angry atheistic archetype, I’ve spent a lot of close time with the Christian faith, and I consider myself a fearful, believing agnostic. What discomfited me in the documentary was the way Snow, the writers and production designers continually presented the original pagan cultures of the British Isles as evil, dark and creepy, like a cheap episode of Ghost Adventures. Bias is such a difficult thing to navigate while making political works, especially when dealing with history. I want to approach the subject matter of my audio paper with little emotion, examining critically and unguardedly, and this stray colouring of cultures is something I would hope to avoid somewhat. That’s why I now feel reassured, as I look retrospectively on Seismograf’s Audio Paper Manifesto, where it states, ‘the audio paper is situated and partial’. In a sense, there’s no real escaping bias and partiality in the thesis format. What is more significant is the thoroughness and depth of research I must go to in order to fully understand how to discuss my chosen subject at length.

Bibliography:

Harlan, D. (2003) ‘Ken Burns and the Coming Crisis of Academic History’, Rethinking History, 7(2), pp. 170