Sandeep

Bhagwati

LET THIS SOUND SLOWLY DISSIPATE

a comprovisation score for sound artists
an homage to the work of Andy Goldsworthy

here, passer-by, l isten to this
transparent sonic e difice
pulsa t ing in ephemeral bliss

it sings in archi t ectures bound
w h ere every trivial, ambient sound
is nudged into i ts proper place
preci s e in harmony and space

just an occurrence, an illusion ? s ure.
but we perceive it as a sc o re

yet, as we mark its bea u ty we foreknow
how time to come and its rele n tless flow
will silently ero d e this order

these sonic fabric s their embroidered borders
all must disperse, di l ute, decay
as nights long d o ldrums will dissolve the day
their sounds displaced, pried w ide apart
some scattered slivers sal l y far afield
just as precariousl y with gentle poise

some fragments d ance with one another, glide and yield,
around a fluttering col i bri of whisperings
that will not yet be all di s pelled, echoes and memories.
These aural apparition s will inevitably fade away
lose peculiar i ty, coherence, grace
melt surre p titously into surrounding noise
gone is the a
rtifact that sings
the trees and stree t s reclaim your ear
what, fellow listen e r, did you hear?

Montral, October 2014

SANDEEP BHAGWATI LET THIS SOUND SLOWLY DISSIPATE

COMPOSERS NOTE
This score aims to provide sound artists with instructions to create an
environmental audio work in the spirit of Andy Goldsworthy, the environmental
artist who creates his works in collaboration with nature.
The text is, on an explicit level, a conceptual description of a possible
environmental sound sculpture and its slow decay a concept easy to grasp and,
perhaps, also to implement.
However, the score here does not aim to be read and interpreted solely on this
purely semantical/instructional level. It is written as a poem, in a mesostic form,
in order to unlock at least two, possibly more, close reading modes: structural
and poetic.
The letters, syllables, rhymes, assonances, rhythms, phrase and line lengths,
accents, etc., but also recurrent motifs and near-synonyms create different
topological architectures, binding distant parts of the poem together and
establish a web of internal cross-references that can be mined for temporal and
sonic structures in preparing and designing the compositional interpretation of
this score.
And the poetic images, allusions, associations and speech sounds in this text can
serve as inspirations and models for the development of the sonic character of
the interpretation of the score, offering suggestions on the kind of sounds or
signal processing to be used.
The main compositional challenge however, is how to deal with the format of the
poem: the title hidden as a vertical mesostic line within the poem - and the
visual shape that this spinal column imposes on the poem itself. The lines and
their displacement in the space of the blank page are also intended to suggest
spatial dispositions for the design and performance of this piece.
Finally, what does one do with the text itself.
Should it be part of the audible reality of this work or not ?
I wish all interpreters and re-composers many inspired moments.