Bragandrice
Nov 13, 2020, 02:59 PM
Antenora created by Robert Rowlands (Auraumua).
"Indolent Belaqua, much loved by Beckett, is met in Ante-Purgatory by Dante, and I like to imagine that as an instrument player he sat under his rock with a lute, or guitar.
"My research into treasonable music led me to discover that there was a time when women who killed their husbands could be considered to have commited treason;
"Husband-murder, in particular however, was seen more as an affront to social hierarchies rather than any one particular person or rank. Killing the patriarch of a household was a threat to the social order—akin to disobedience against a feudal lord or the monarch—and the delicate balance of power and gender roles that governed early modern England, as strengthened by Protestant doctrine: “if any servant kill his Master, any woman kill her husband, or any secular or religious person kill his Prelate to whom he owes Obedience, this is treason.”(1) Special legal status thus existed for husband murderers, and they were subjected to the same punishment as those convicted of high treason. (2)"
"With this in mind I reasoned that they may have found themselves condemned to an eternity in Antenora (traitors to country), rather than Caina (traitors to kindred). A popular (and lost) melody at the time was that of Bragandary to which tales of 'evil and wrongdoing' were set.
"I found another 16th century melody which is said to be similar to Bragandary, called 'Robin and Jeck', and it is fragments of this melody, idly played by Belaqua, which echo in the wind of my piece. I would hope that people might reflect on the battle for an equality of justice and rights that women are still fighting for at this very moment when they consider the background to the melody that haunts the piece; not an eternity, but a life of anguish.
"The soundtrack was created from manipulated sound recordings of ice that I made some years ago; walking on ice, sliding pieces of ice along the fragile surface of ponds and lakes, and breaking up pieces of ice in the wind. Other sounds were produced in the Supercollider coding environment as I needed them. I played the lute melody on guitar, and moans and wailing were captured in the studio."
(1) William Rastall, A Collection in English of the Statutes Now in Force (London: Printed for the Societie of Stationers, 1603), 460.b.
(2) Sarah F. Williams. Damnable Practises: Witches, Dangerous Women, and Music in Seventeenth-Century English Broadside Ballads. Seventeenth-Century News. 2016;74(1-2):41.
"Indolent Belaqua, much loved by Beckett, is met in Ante-Purgatory by Dante, and I like to imagine that as an instrument player he sat under his rock with a lute, or guitar.
"My research into treasonable music led me to discover that there was a time when women who killed their husbands could be considered to have commited treason;
"Husband-murder, in particular however, was seen more as an affront to social hierarchies rather than any one particular person or rank. Killing the patriarch of a household was a threat to the social order—akin to disobedience against a feudal lord or the monarch—and the delicate balance of power and gender roles that governed early modern England, as strengthened by Protestant doctrine: “if any servant kill his Master, any woman kill her husband, or any secular or religious person kill his Prelate to whom he owes Obedience, this is treason.”(1) Special legal status thus existed for husband murderers, and they were subjected to the same punishment as those convicted of high treason. (2)"
"With this in mind I reasoned that they may have found themselves condemned to an eternity in Antenora (traitors to country), rather than Caina (traitors to kindred). A popular (and lost) melody at the time was that of Bragandary to which tales of 'evil and wrongdoing' were set.
"I found another 16th century melody which is said to be similar to Bragandary, called 'Robin and Jeck', and it is fragments of this melody, idly played by Belaqua, which echo in the wind of my piece. I would hope that people might reflect on the battle for an equality of justice and rights that women are still fighting for at this very moment when they consider the background to the melody that haunts the piece; not an eternity, but a life of anguish.
"The soundtrack was created from manipulated sound recordings of ice that I made some years ago; walking on ice, sliding pieces of ice along the fragile surface of ponds and lakes, and breaking up pieces of ice in the wind. Other sounds were produced in the Supercollider coding environment as I needed them. I played the lute melody on guitar, and moans and wailing were captured in the studio."
(1) William Rastall, A Collection in English of the Statutes Now in Force (London: Printed for the Societie of Stationers, 1603), 460.b.
(2) Sarah F. Williams. Damnable Practises: Witches, Dangerous Women, and Music in Seventeenth-Century English Broadside Ballads. Seventeenth-Century News. 2016;74(1-2):41.
Part of the Inferno project to imagine and compose the sounds of Dante’s Hell, marking the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy. To find out more, visit http://www.citiesandmemory.com/inferno