w21030
| Title | Silent Spring |
| Contributors |
George Newson (composer) |
| Composition date | 1967 |
| Duration (mins) | 0 |
| Category | electroacoustic |
| Instrumentation | Tape |
| Commissioned by | |
| Key signature | |
| First line | |
| First performed | |
| Notes | Realised at the University of Illinois. |
| Programme Note | I had the opportunity to realise a composition on this subject in 1967 when I was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to research electronic music in the USA. In the University of Illinois I made the first version of Silent Spring - it was a tape piece based on some sounds of nature such as bird song, animal calls, primitive song etc. The tape included a spoken text which was taken from writings found in the Old Testament, Plato and Chekhov. This text illustrated aspects of the destruction of the environment. I have continued this historical approach in the second realisation of Silent Spring by using the original text plus poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins and myself. Here the words are sung, instead of spoken, and they are divided between a large chorus, a chamber choir and a baritone soloist. There are no electronic or recorded wildlife sounds in this new version, instead there is a chamber orchestra which occasionally imitates sounds of nature. For instance, the opening section, which imitates a dawn chorus, is based on the song of the nightingale. The work ends with Hopkins' elegiac words: 'What would this world be, once bereft of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, Wildness and wet. Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.' (George Newson, 28 June 1990) |
This work is associated with the following collection items:
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