Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Most Corporeal to date?

I left one piece out of the list of folk melodies and hymns (below). I did this quite deliberately as this short excerpt, although obviously related to the other songs, is of such a strange and ethereal quality that it stands out. It's a rendition, in Gaellic, of Psalm 56, Verse 12, and is sung by a choir that sounds so ragged and untogether that the sound veers close to noise. But there is definitely a melody that rises and falls, following the lining out of the leader, even if the pitch and timing of the choir diverges from that line. It's an extraordinary sound of great power. I would judge that this is exactly the type of music that Harry Partch would call Corporeal - music that seems to spring directly from the voice and the word with no concession to the Abstract at all.

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