Vespri infiniti
Aug 18, 2020, 01:37 PM
Vespers at the Abbazia Praglia, Italy, reimagined by Cities and Memory.
"Listening to the vespers being sung so beautifully was a magical moment, and at the time I wished it was possible to just take the songs and loop them into hours-long pieces for deep listening and meditation.
"Naturally, then, this field recording lent itself to becoming a composition called 'Vespri infiniti'.
"Two small sections of the monks' song were cut into loops, and these loops alternate every two minutes throughout the piece to give some subtle variation to the melodic phrasing.
"The audio from these loops was converted into MIDI, which was then used to provide some string- and vocal-based accompaniment for the second half of the piece, as the monks are in effect performing as their own string accompaniment.
"The loops are treated with all kinds of reverbs, delays and tape effects, enveloped throughout so the effects unfold gradually and slowly layer on top of one another. From one second to the next, there are no real perceptible changes to the loops, but over twenty minutes they expand, distort and degrade, representing the way my thoughts wandered and digressed beautifully as I locked myself in step with the trancelike songs."
"Listening to the vespers being sung so beautifully was a magical moment, and at the time I wished it was possible to just take the songs and loop them into hours-long pieces for deep listening and meditation.
"Naturally, then, this field recording lent itself to becoming a composition called 'Vespri infiniti'.
"Two small sections of the monks' song were cut into loops, and these loops alternate every two minutes throughout the piece to give some subtle variation to the melodic phrasing.
"The audio from these loops was converted into MIDI, which was then used to provide some string- and vocal-based accompaniment for the second half of the piece, as the monks are in effect performing as their own string accompaniment.
"The loops are treated with all kinds of reverbs, delays and tape effects, enveloped throughout so the effects unfold gradually and slowly layer on top of one another. From one second to the next, there are no real perceptible changes to the loops, but over twenty minutes they expand, distort and degrade, representing the way my thoughts wandered and digressed beautifully as I locked myself in step with the trancelike songs."