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Testimonies, Flaming Pasts

from Ongoing Collected Works by Ben Zucker

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For vocalizing string quartet and live electronics--

The various hymn-tune collections that make up the tradition of American shape-note singing are a deep source of powerful sound: many singers vocalizing at full force, in numerous parallel harmonies, for me has often felt like a richly physical presence (the way trumpets destroyed the walls of Jericho). It goes well with the striking imagery of many texts, which are often concerned with the grandiose passage of this world to the next, such as this fragment of the last verse of “The Turtle Dove” from the Southern Harmony:

When sun and moon shall darkened be,
And flames consume the land and sea,
When worlds on worlds together blaze,
We'll shout, and loud hosannas raise.


But for all its apocalyptic evocations, the meaning is ultimately interior: have I lived in a way that I can rest easy with for all eternity? Should I be cleansed in a great wash of awe in the form of sound?

This work is in no way an approximation or substitution for the experience of shape-note singing (I can’t recommend enough seeking out the many weekly gatherings or conventions), but the material and thematic concerns are perhaps akin. Spoken texts derived from interior reflections on these words, an idiomatic tune I wrote a long time ago, and the reverberation and retuning of instruments as their own little Revelations. A space will open up, and its long echoes will linger in time for us to begin the journey towards, if we feel right enough to do so.

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from Ongoing Collected Works, released August 23, 2017
Premiered by the Mivos Quartet at the VIPA Festival, July 14, 2016,
Conservatorio Superior Música Valencia “Joaquín Rodrigo”, Valencia, Spain.

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Ben Zucker

"Between thought and expression, lies a lifetime"

(Velvet Underground)

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