Works archive

"CANTUS APIUM - 7 Variations on Vergil for Voice and 15 Bees".

Author: Götz Naleppa
Genre: Sound Art / Sound Composition
Production: Götz Naleppa 2013
Original broadcast: 14.04.2014, Deutschlandradio Kultur
Length: 40:12
Composition: Götz Naleppa
Sound and technology: Götz Naleppa

Content:
The central theme of the composition is the famous Latin text by Virgil about bees from his "Georgica". The material consists of recordings of15 bee colonies, from 7 a.m. to midday on a sunny May day in the Westerwald. The concept: text quotations (Latin and German) with non-manipulated bee sounds, chronologically over the course of the day: from early morning (few and scattered), later the lower frequencies when the drones fly, to midday (many and intense). In between, seven musical variations of 'bee song' - in other words, bee sounds processed with extreme filters to make the 'music', the song of the bees, audible. So everything you hear is generated from bee sounds, including the rhythm elements.
The main theme was 'chaos and structure': I tried to find structures in the chaos of thousands of simultaneous sounds, to filter out frequencies, to discover rhythmic elements - to make patterns and 'beauty' audible. The whole piece has thus become one big crescendo - corresponding to the crescendo of the bee colonies from morning to midday: the beginning is calm and 'idyllic' in Virgil's sense and then increases very slowly until the bees' 'war dances' and an end in the present time, which alludes to the worldwide endangerment of bees and thus also of humans.
(Götz Naleppa)

Remarks:
Thanks to the beekeeper Christian Matthey, Westerwaldkreis.
Special prize for sound art at the Marulic Festival, Croatia 2014,
GOLD AWARD of the New York Festival 2014.


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