Piriforms by Laura Steenberge

"In medieval chant, music seems to have come from elsewhere.
It is the angels that are singing, they said, like gourds
hung up for purple martins. By the time notation started coming
around, hundreds of chants were already hundreds of years old.
New chants followed in their footsteps, trying to seem unwritten.
In some monasteries, the monks sang for six hours a day. Through
the daily toil of reenacting eternity, subtler shapes become audible.
Sometimes the angels show up when the consonants are taken
away, or some other change is made that renders the language
unintelligible. Swedenborg said there are some angels who speak
with U and O and other angels that speak with E and I, but that in the
center, inmost heaven, language is made of patterns of numbers.
The labor required to hear the angels is mundane and physical.
Singing for hours a day sounds idyllic but also laborious. Singing
for so long in such reverberant spaces, I wonder about the
complexity of harmonics, combination tones or whatever other
sonic artifacts that the monastic singers gained sensitivity to.

In this collection there is a piece for one performer, a piece for two performers, a piece for three performers, and a piece for four performers. But even in the solo it is about relationships, as the two parts are created with the same breath. The demonic energy is in between things, the sounds cast shadows upon each other."

- Laura Steenberge


Thank you to Bissera, Cat, Jess, Julia, Mustafa, Rebecca, and Q for the inspiration.

Laura Steenberge is an interdisciplinary composer and performer at the crossroads of music, language, gesture, and mythology.

https://laurasteenberge.com/