Maria W Horn - Lo! The Dim Shadows of the Night
8 - 13 August 2023
4DSOUND Residency at Monom Berlin
Especially for the festival Ocean Of Sound, Swedish composer Maria W Horn creates a new work for electronics and singers in 4DSOUND
World premiere on Thursday 7 December 2023 as part of Ocean Of Sound - Belgium’s first 4DSOUND Festival
Lo! The Dim Shadows of the Night is a piece by Maria W Horn for vocal duo and electroacoustic sound, originally composed for the spatial MONOM 4DSOUND-system. Continuing the work started in her 2020 piece Dies Irae, Maria uses a modified form of traditional tonal harmonic language to invoke an uncanny middle ground between the classical western polyphonic vocal tradition and contemporary electronic music.
The piece uses a mixture of algorithmically generated synthesis, created within the SuperCollider framework, and recordings of glass in various iterations - pitched and arranged into harmonic grids, struck and shattered. The piece is sung by Ansis Bētiņš and Artūrs Čukurs from Riga, Latvia. The text is based on fragments from the hymn Ecce iam noctis.
Ecce iam noctis tenuatur umbra
lucis aurora rutilans coruscat;
LO! the dim shadows of the night are waning;
radiantly glowing, dawn of day returneth;
CREDITS
Composition: Maria W Horn | Voice: Ansis Bētiņš | Voice: Artūrs Čukurs | Spatialized & produced by Monom Studios, commissioned by STUK - House for Dance, Image & Sound for Ocean Of Sound 2023 | In the context of: New Horizons | Dieric Bouts Festival, an initiative of KU[N]ST Leuven: www.diericboutsfestival.be | Special thanks to: Swamp Booking