Nature-Symphony Prelude 2
— Song of anguish — memorial to Alexei Navalny

Opus 69 (2024) — Timing: 12'

derived from a field recording of a solo 8-tube metal wind chime

Nature-symphonies — a transformational discovery (background notes)…

It was in 2012 that I tentatively started recording natural soundscapes, and within a few months got the idea of purchasing some high-grade precision-tuned wind chimes to record out in the wilds, hung up on tree branches. …

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… I quickly found that not only was the sound of each set of chimes individually beautiful and to some extent inspiring in quality when recorded out in the wild like that (mostly high-up in the Teign Gorge, Devon, UK), but also, almost all of the combinations of different chimes worked out beautifully musically, though naturally some combinations made a more 'challenging' listen than others.

Much more recently I tried making a half-speed version of part of each of the most appealing or otherwise 'promising' chimes ensemble recordings. They were each a revelation — immensely beautiful, with quite dramatic transformation of the original sound. That is, not just a matter of being slower and an octave lower, but the whole musical and emotional effect changed.

But then, in late August 2023 I got this little urge to do something really stupid (all the world's 'sheep' know I'm stupid anyway, so I thought I might as well do it anyway!), and try putting a particularly evocative chimes ensemble recording in a virtual cathedral, of all things, just to see how crazy it might sound.

I tried that with a particularly usable and effective reverb VST plugin called Orilriver, and was bowled over by the results. Shivers up spine, and plenty of goose-bumps for good measure! I then did listening spot tests using Orilriver in preview mode on a wide selection of my half-speed chimes recordings, and every one was incredibly, amazingly, transformed.

It was clear that I'd sort-of unwittingly stumbled into producing powerfully beautiful stochastic / probability-driven music works that have a lot in common with the ethos and methods of Iannis Xenakis, but with a big practical difference. Whereas typically he worked out probabilistic structures and processes to shape many of his works, this lunatic composer instead left that task to 'Mother Nature', then transforming those sounds in a way that Xenakis did in most of his electroacoustic works, to enhance their ability to excite the listener's own inner creativity and to generate profound and powerful experiences in the process.

It can be no surprise, then, that in these new works of mine there would be passing (albeit partial) resemblances to certain Xenakis works — Bohor comes particularly to mind, and even, in a funny way, some aspects of Terretektorh.

It was then a real no-brainer to recognise each such piece of mine as one of my numbered public music compositions. For the purpose of a liberating simplicity I chose to classify ALL of this type of work that I produce as what I'm calling nature-symphonies. That hyphen is important, because they are not just symphonies about nature, but are a very specific type of composition — nature-generated symphonies.

The term 'symphony', although closely guarded with a very restricted meaning by small-minded traditionalists, actually just means 'sounding together', which apparently was its original meaning. For me to want to use that term, there need to be at least two contrasting elements that are in some way combined or worked together in some way that is much more effective and deeply inspiring than the sum of those elements.

Although, in terms of my own nature-symphonies, that would mean ensembles rather than solo chimes sets, I've found that certain of my recordings using just one chimes set still produce effective and powerful nature-symphonies because of some element of the natural soundscape within which the chimes were sounding. A weir or waterfall, for example, or the wind itself, or a liberal amount of bird sound (much of which latter sounds remarkably musical at half-speed).

As for title for each work, they won't all necessarily have a title beyond Nature-Symphony [nn]. I'll add an imaginative title only where the finished piece suggests one to me. — Well, er, except that I do have one title earnestly looking for a work for it to be applied to, but currently I don't see how it could fit any extant or future transformed wind chimes works of mine! Not telling why!

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Basic details

A different recording taken during same session as the original for this work — *Another recording taking place in the same session. The arrow points to the recorder; one of the metal chimes is the Twilight one, which is used in this work.*

Instrumentation — Part of field recording of a solo 8-tube metal wind chime, deployed in four layers.
Original field recording location / date:
- 24 February 2017, high up on north side of Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK.
Processing — The layers were processed as follows (all of them given a back-of-cathedral acoustic):
- Layer 1: Half-speed and thus an octave below original
- Layer 2: Speed reduction to reduce pitch to an octave plus a major third below original
- Layer 3: Speed reduction to give pitch reduction of an octave plus two major thirds
- Layer 4: Same speed reduction as Layer 3, but pitch reduced by another major third, making it two octaves below original.
I give some more specifics about the recordings, chimes used, and the subsequent processing, on my Freesound page for the work.
Distinguishing features — This is arguably the most intense work that I've yet produced — the effect coming from the crazily potent intervals and chords that the particular chime (Davis Blanchard Twilight) gives out: a potent mix of augmented triad, minor major seventh, minor triad, major seventh, and a poignant repeating descending minor second (semitone), and the augmented triads multiplied considerably by the major-third difference between each layer and its neighbours.

So, here we have a complex wall of sound, seething with dissonances that are always resolving or somehow morphing into consonant intervals, and which comes to a searing climax as we approach the end — an almost undignified fade-out then following.

In terms of its subtext, this work is a distinct parallel to De Profundis Clamavi — A Cry from the World, which I composed in 2001 following the '9/11' outrage — though the sound of the two works is worlds apart. I'd started assembling this work just before Alexei Navalny's apparent assassination, and wondering whether I could really use such a dense and unremitting piece, and then I suddenly had a precisely matching focus for the work, which made complete sense of it.

Nature-Symphony Prelude 2— Song of anguish — memorial to Alexei Navalny

Basic details

Nature-Symphony Prelude 2
— Song of anguish — memorial to Alexei Navalny