Margrit Rieben - Brückengesang
The grand motorway bridge Ponte 25 de Abril in Lissabon can be heard from afar; it emits a soft and pleasing sound, almost like the song of sirens. I first expected to find a giant sound art installation. The bridge has inspired this conceptual piece to which the M+M Chor, consisting of 36 people, has lent ist voices. These 36 voices were recorded separately without a guide track, which resulted in a gradual detuning of the voices that a choir could never produce as a whole. It‘s astonishing how, by this process, the analogue sound of voices attains a more and more synthetic character. The resulting layers of overtones sometimes makes one think of an angel‘s choir appearing in the background, and out of the monochrome emerges a thing of high complexity.
© + ℗ 2010 by Margrit Rieben