EXAUDI: EXPOSURE2025

Antoine Veillerette Orbis in Extremi

 

Orbis in Extremi sets an excerpt from Ovid's Epistulae ex Ponto (letters from the Black Sea). These were written by Ovid as he was exiled in Tomis (modern day Constanta in Romania). The excerpt addresses his turbulent and volatile psychology during that experience. This is then reflected in the varied textures and counterpoints throughout the piece.

​

Orbis in extremi iaceo desertus harenis,

I lie abandoned on the sand at the edge of the world,

fert ubi perpetuas obruta terra nives.

where the earth bears perpetual snows.

Non ager hic pomum, non dulces educat uvas,

No field here produce apples, no sweet grapes,

non salices ripa, robora monte virent.

no willows on the bank, no oaks on the mountain.

neve fretum laudes terra magis, aequora semper

​Nor can the sea be praised more than the land,

ventorum rabie solibus orba tument.

​as the seas swell in the fury of the winds, bereft of the sun.

quocumque aspicies, campi cultore carentes

​Wherever you look, fields lie without tillers,

vastaque, quae nemo vindicat, arva iacent.

​vast plains that no one claims.

Hostis ades dextra laevaque a parte timendus,

​The dreaded enemy is close on the right and the left,

vicinoque metu terret utrumque latus.

terrifying us with imminent fear from both sides.

 

​

Eluned Davies No Language

 

No Language takes its text from the poetry of R.S. Thomas and Psalm 19. R.S. Thomas was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest whose subject matter was often spiritual and metaphysical in nature - a modern quasi-psalmist.

 

​

Georgie West Get rid of the ugly cutlery

 

A reflection on the domestic act of casual note-writing. Highlighting the wit, romance, angst

and charm within the everyday human experience.

 

​

Yotham Ben Yam A hosszú, hosszú, hosszú éjszakán

 

The Long, Long, Long Night is a short tone poem for six unaccompanied voices. The text comes from a turn of the century Hungarian impressionist poet, Kosztolányi Dezső. He depicts loneliness as a mad lady who sits on his bed and combs her hair incessantly, preventing him from falling asleep. Each time he would doze off she rattles her combs and their jingles wake him from the slumber he so longs for. My music flows between these two states of falling asleep and waking up, painting the image with the colourful Hungarian language and drawing on the melancholic and strange moods of night music from Dutilleux, Lutoslawski and of course, Bartók.

​

A hosszú, hosszú, hosszú éjszakán           

On the long, long, long night,

ágyamra ül fásultan a magány                

loneliness sits on my bed,

és rámtekint és nézdeli magát                

looking at me and looking at herself,

és fésüli hosszú, hosszú haját.               

Combing her long, long hair.

 

Eszelős hölgy. A szeme oly szelíd           

A mad lady. Her eyes are so gently,

és bontja, oldja tornyos fürtjeit              

and she unties and unties her towering curls

és oldja, bontja - percre perc enyész - 

and unties and unties them, minute by minute they fade

és újra kezdi mindig. Sose kész.             

And she always starts anew. Never done.

 

És oldja álmom, bontja gondomat,       

And she unties my dreams, unties my worries,

álomtalan partokat hívogat.                     

Calling to dreamless shores.

Ha szunnyadok, csörrennek fésüi,        

When I doze, her combs jingle,

hosszú haját nevetve fésüli.                     

She brushes her long hair laughing.

 

Csak hallgatom álomban, éberen,        

I only listen in my dreams, awake,

hogyan motoz-motoz az éjjelen.             

How she ruffles and ruffles in the night.

Most újra kezdi. Végtelen haja                

Now she begins again. Her endless hair

oly hosszú, hosszú, mint az éjszaka.    

Is as long, long as the night.

​

1910. Translation by Yotham Ben Yami, 2025

​

​

Elisabet Dijkstra muein

 

The word ‘muein’ means to close the lips, or that which is unspeakable, withdrawn, enclosed. It is the Greek root of the word mysterious.

 

​

Hollie Harding Keepsakes

 

Old metal and dust

Very beautiful

Flight

A stone cochlear

My one little rebellion

A leaving present

 

While preparing to move house, I sorted through my possessions and discovered my ‘memory box’ — a collection of seemingly ordinary items, made magical by their associated feelings and memories. This inspired me to invite members of EXAUDI to share their own Keepsakes and the memories tied to them with me. I used their responses to create this set of vignettes, with each movement based on one of their meaningful objects. The project draws on artist Joe Brainard’s memoir I Remember (1975) which mixes the mundane and profound through a stream of consciousness list of moments and tangents prefixed with the phrase ‘I remember’. Asking the performers to reflect on a single Keepsake offered a focused way to echo Brainard’s approach and sentiment. Thank you to James Weeks and EXAUDI for their generous contributions and for this opportunity!

 

​

Jake Thorpe hush, shush, shh

 

hush, shush, shh is inspired by the feeling of being not fully awake, but not quite asleep. About drifting thoughts and shifting awareness, exploring a blurred image where the real world and the imagined start to overlap.

 

​

Christopher Fox INCANTI

 

On the morning of 7th February 2024 I woke with an acute sense that I had just been listening to music – the grain of solo voices, enveloped by an aura of purer tones – and I spent the next weeks finding a way to make this music performable. I made a sine-tone soundtrack, the harmonies based on intervals from the harmonic series (the 7:8 and 11:12 intervals provide a particular flavour). Some of these tones are taken up by the singers in a series of repeated short phrases, each phrase coloured by handfuls of words from Ezra Pound’s Cantos. Pound’s political ideas are repellent but he had learnt from classical Chinese poetry how to capture momentary sensations of the natural world. These brief images – ‘the smell of mint after rain’, ‘half-light, the sea beyond’, ‘shadows marking the hours’ – are both words to sing and performance directions.

 

 

Tayla-Leigh Payne Dan Orchudd Golau

 

Dan Orchudd Golau (Beneath the Veils of Light) draws influence from one of Gustav Klimt's works, Philosophy. In the painting, there is sense of being suspended in the in-between, this dreamlike, spiritual state. These are themes and characteristics which feature in this piece, particularly this progressive sense of decay in not only the notation but of the pitch, intonation, rhythm, text and speech alike.

 

Mae'r neithdar melysaf yn dirlenwi'r ddaear yn ei bydredd.

The sweetest nectar saturates the earth in its decay.

Gwir yn cuddio o dan orchudd golau.

Truth hides beneath the veils of light.

O'r anhysbys, rydyn ni'n dod.

From the unknown, we become.

 

 

Julian Philips The Poet’s Favourite Places

 

I. Helpston

II. Langley Bush

III. Swordy Well

IV. In Hilly Wood

 

The Poet’s Favourite Places forms part of an ongoing creative response to the life and work of poet John Clare (1793-1864), following on from Melodys of Earth and Sky (2022) for violin and clarinet, or the song cycle Love Songs for Mary Joyce (2016). Here the concern is for four of Clare’s ‘favourite places’, explored through musical settings of associated Clare texts. These settings are then placed in dialogue with field recordings of these favourite places as they are now, recordings collected by the composer during February 2024.

 

Inevitably, The Poet’s Favourite Places mines familiar Clare themes: immersion in nature, sentimental attachment to a particular tree or bush, reminiscences of childhood experience, bitterness towards that great trifle, ‘man’. But it also hopes to explore the uncanny timeslip between how these favourite Clare places might have been experienced in the 1820s and how they are now, in a period of climate degradation and global warming.

 

The Poet’s Favourite Places is written in a ¼ comma meantone tuning, fully exploiting this temperament's just major and minor triads, but also deploying its lack of enharmony as a way of generating untempered, microtonal inflections. Perhaps just another way of exploring the uncanny timeslip by illuminating Clare’s pictures in sharper and more vivid colours.

 

1. from Helpstone

Hail, humble Helpstone, where thy valleys spread

And thy mean village lifts its lowly head,

Unknown to grandeur and unknown to fame,

No minstrel boasting to advance thy name:

Unlettered spot, unheard in poets’ song,

Where bustling labour drives the hours along,

Where dawning genius never met the day,

Where useless ignorance slumbers life away

Unknown nor heeded, where low genius tries

Above the vulgar and the vain to rise.

 

Hail, scenes obscure, so near and dear to me,

The church, the brook, the cottage and the tree:

Still shall obscurity rehearse the song

And hum your beauties as I stroll along.

 

These joys all known in happy infancy,

And all I ever knew, were spent in thee.

And who but loves to view where these were past?

And who that views but loves them to the last,

Feels his heart warm to view his native place,

A fondness still those past delights to trace,

 

O happy Eden of those golden years

Which memory cherishes and use endears,

Thou dear beloved spot, may it be thine

To add a comfort to my life’s decline.

 

2. Langley Bush

O Langley Bush, the shepherd’s sacred shade,

    Thy hollow trunk oft gained a look from me;

Full many a journey o’er the heath I’ve made,

    For such-like curious things I love to see.

What truth the story of the swain allows,

    That tells of honours which thy young days knew,

Of ‘Langley Court’ being kept beneath thy boughs,

    I cannot tell – thus much I know is true,

That thou art reverenced: even the rude clan

    Of lawless gypsies, driven from stage to stage,

Pilfering the hedges of the husbandman,

    Spare thee, as sacred, in thy withering age.

Both swains and gypsies seem to love thy name,

    Thy spot’s a favourite with the sooty crew,

And soon thou must depend on gypsy-fame,

    Thy mouldering trunk is nearly rotten through.

My last doubts murmur on the zephyr’s swell,

    My last look lingers on thy boughs with pain;

To thy declining age I bid farewell,

Like old companions, ne’er to meet again.

 

3. Swordy Well

I’ve loved thee, Swordy Well, and love thee still:

Long was I with thee, tenting sheep and cow

In boyhood, ramping up each steepy hill

To play at ‘roly poly’ down – and now

A man I trifle o’er thee, cares to kill,

Haunting thy mossy steeps to botanise

And hunt the orchis tribes where nature’s skill

Doth like my thoughts run into fantasies –

Spider and bee all mimicking at will,

Displaying powers that fools the proudly wise,

Showing the wonders of great nature’s plan

In trifles insignificant and small,

Puzzling the power of that great trifle man,

Who finds no reason to be proud at all.

 

4. In Hilly Wood

How sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs

Upon an ashen stoven pillowing me;

Faintly are heard the ploughmen at their ploughs,

But not an eye can find its way to see.

The sunbeams scarce molest me with a smile,

So thick the leafy armies gather round;

And where they do, the breeze blows cool the while,

Their leafy shadows dancing on the ground.

Full many a flower, too, wishing to be seen,

Perks up its head the hiding grass between –

In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be,

Where all the noises that on peace intrude

Come from chittering cricket, bird and bee,

Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.