The work’s title fifty-seven one is a Biblical reference to the Psalm 57, verse 1. Just as the referent of the title is unclear, the presentation of the text is such that there is only one spot in the work where the text is clearly understandable and this is shouted in Greek at the climax. The impetus for this work came from the 9/11 tragedy, but the concept of the work had been with me for months. The basic idea was to treat the choir more like an orchestra, where there are many timbres and many solo instruments. I scored the work for 16 voices arranged in 4 SATB quartets mirrored in a semi-circle arrangement. Each voice has its own part.
I chose to use the phonemes of English (plus a few others) as my color palette. The work begins with the weakest sounds, fricatives. One of the weakest fricatives, the interdental fricative ‘th,’ starts the piece, barely audible. The sound spreads from the center of the choir outward in both directions and returns to the center. The next gestures are similar but the fricatives used are ‘s,’ then ‘sh’, each wedge growing in intensity and dynamic. The next section uses waves of voiceless fricatives, like an ocean, pounding at a beach. Finally, out of the ocean, emerge voiced sounds. Pitches are determined by a simple pitch class set (starting pitch, minor second up, major second down, minor third up) and the inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversions of this set. The waves still pound until everything is voiced This section ends with an explosion of stopped consonants.
In the following section, quartets of nasal sounds enter in canon style. Eventually, after the nasals die out in small explosions, vowels enter into the fray but they form no words. Tonally a large octave cluster is built, but this falls apart with hints of consonant intervals emerging as voices fall away. The next section sees the emergence of more complex structures, which in fact are the syllables of kyrie eleison ‘Lord, have mercy’ stratified by phoneme. This moves quickly to kyrie eleison being whispered in canon by all sixteen voices. This builds in dynamic and tempo until everyone is yelling in uncoordinated chaos. After a grand pause, the climax is reached, everyone shouting kyrie eleison in unison with short pauses between each syllable.
Once the climax is passed, the work reverses itself in the way it was built up. The rest of the text (in English now) is approached the same way as the Greek text, with the phonemes of each syllable stratified against each other in unison making the text indistinguishable. The pieces ends as it begins as vowels move on to nasals which move on to voiced fricatives which move on to voiceless fricatives which die out into silence.
This work makes use of symbolic language to communicate eternal truths. There are grand sweeping waves of sound that emerge from silence, pounding on the beach of time. From this ocean of voiceless fricatives (which are basically organized noise) emerge voiced fricatives (which are still noisy but more organized). After a grand pause, the nasals emerge out of silence (these are even more organized) but die away in mini explosions. Vowels (the most organized of the vocal sounds) enter next out of the background noise left behind by the nasals. The vowels cover the entire vowel space and the pitches cover all 12 tones. Eventually syllables, then words appear. Basically, the whole piece is one huge evolutionary wave building up to the climax where everyone shouts kyrie eleison in unison. After that the direction reverses and LOGOS returns to the ocean of silence.
lyrics
Text: Kyrie eleison (Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me), for in you my soul takes refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed. Psalm 57:1.
credits
released January 1, 2008
Kenneth L. Field: Composer
Kiev Chamber Choir
Robert Ian Winstin: Conductor
Recorded in conjunction with ERM Media.
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