''Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco'' ("I Mourn the Dead, I Call the Living") for
eight-track tape is a
musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an Originality, original piece or work of music, either Human voice, vocal or Musical instrument, instrumental, the musical form, structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new pie ...
created in 1980 by
Jonathan Harvey, with the assistance of Stanley Haynes and Xavier Rodet, commissioned by the
Centre Georges Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...
in Paris. The two sounds contrasted are the tenor
bell
A bell /ˈbɛl/ () is a directly struck idiophone percussion instrument. Most bells have the shape of a hollow cup that when struck vibrates in a single strong strike tone, with its sides forming an efficient resonator. The strike may be m ...
at
Winchester Cathedral
The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity,Historic England. "Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity (1095509)". ''National Heritage List for England''. Retrieved 8 September 2014. Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Swithun, commonly known as Winches ...
, England and the
voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound produ ...
of the composer's son Dominic, at the time a chorister there, both recorded by John Whiting. The text is taken from that written on the bell: ''Horas Avolantes Numero, Mortuos Plango: Vivos ad Preces Voco'' ("I count the fleeing hours, I lament the dead: the living I call to prayer").
[Roads, ed. (1992). Harvey, p.91.] Music V was used to analyze and transform the sounds.
The music is '
octophonic
Octophonic sound is a form of audio reproduction that presents eight discrete audio channels using eight speakers. For playback, the speakers may be positioned in a circle around the listeners or in any other configuration.
Typical speaker conf ...
', being projected into the auditorium through a cube of eight channels: "the ideal listener is 'inside' the bell, its
partials distributed in space; the boy's voice flies around, derived from, yet becoming the bell sound." "The eight
sections
Section, Sectioning, or Sectioned may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media
* Section (music), a complete, but not independent, musical idea
* Section (typography), a subdivision, especially of a chapter, in books and documents
** Section sig ...
are based on one of the principal eight lowest partials.
Chords
Chord or chords may refer to:
Art and music
* Chord (music), an aggregate of musical pitches sounded simultaneously
** Guitar chord, a chord played on a guitar, which has a particular tuning
* The Chords (British band), 1970s British mod ...
are constructed from the repertoire of thirty-three partials
f the bell and
modulations from one area of the spectrum to another are achieved by means of
glissandi
In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a wikt:glide, glide from one pitch (music), pitch to another (). It is an Italianized Musical terminology, musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In ...
."
The bell's spectrum, though on C, contains F harmonic series partials, "'to curiously thrilling and disturbing effect.'"
"Such 'unanalyzable' secondary
strike notes are quite common in bells."
The organization of the piece, "modulating 'from a bigger bell to a smaller bell,'" may, "be interpreted in a number of ways:"
[Downes, Michael (2009). ''Jonathan Harvey: Song offerings and White as jasmine'', p.22. . Quotes Harvey 1986c, p.181 and Whittall 1999, p.27.]
#"as a quasi-
tonal procedure"
hierarchies analogous to (but distinct from) the traditional western tonal system."ref name="Roads"/>
#"as an attempt to transfer
serial processes to electronic music"
#"as a '
prolongation
In music theory, prolongation is the process in tonality, tonal music through which a pitch (music), pitch, interval (music), interval, or triad (music), consonant triad is considered to govern spans of music when not physically sounding. It is a ...
' of the initial
inharmonic
In music, inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (also known as partials or partial tones) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency ( harmonic series).
Acoustically, a note perceived to have a sin ...
series"
#"'as different perspectives on an object that is always present'" per Michael Clarke
According to
Curtis Roads
Curtis Roads (born May 9, 1951) is an American composer, author and computer programmer. He composes electronic and electroacoustic music, specializing in granular and pulsar synthesis.
Career and music
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Roads studied co ...
, "Three compositions produced in the 1980s stand as good examples of compositional manipulation of
analysis data: ''Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco'' (1981) by Jonathan Harvey, ''
Désintegrations'' (1983, Salabert Trajectoires) by
Tristan Murail
Tristan Murail (born 11 March 1947) is a French composer associated with the " spectral" technique of composition. Among his compositions is the large orchestral work ''Gondwana''.
Early life and studies
Murail was born in Le Havre, France. His f ...
, and ''
Digital Moonscapes
''Digital Moonscapes'' (1984) is an album by Wendy Carlos. "Written for orchestra (or orchestra replica), it is inspired by several astronomical subjects." '' (1985, CBS/Sony) by
Wendy Carlos
Wendy Carlos (born Walter Carlos; November 14, 1939) is an American musician and composer known for electronic music and film scores.
Born and raised in Rhode Island, Carlos studied physics and music at Brown University before moving to New Y ...
."
[Roads, Curtis (1996). ''The Computer Music Tutorial'', p.146. .] ''Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco'' is notable both within and without Harvey's career: "it showed the
/nowiki>IRCAM">IRCAM.html" ;"title="/nowiki>IRCAM">/nowiki>IRCAM/nowiki> institute's apparently esoteric research programme could yield music capable of appealing to a wider audience,"
, of initiating a work with the detailed investigation of a single sound—in this case the Winchester bell. The crucial difference is that whereas the musical tuning">open D string used as the basis of the earlier work may be heard as a harmonic series, the bell produces a spectrum of partials not harmonically related to one another or to the fundamental c."
* Bossis, Bruno. 2004. "''Mortuos plango, vivos voco'' de Jonathan Harvey ou le miroir de la spiritualité". ''Musurgia: Analyse et pratique musicales'' 11, nos. 1–2:119–44.
* Clarke, Michael. 2006. "Jonathan Harvey's ''Mortuos plango, vivos voco''". In ''Analytical Methods of Electroacoustic Music'', edited by Mary Simoni, 111–43. Studies on New Music Research. New York, NY: Routledge.
* Georgakī, Anastasia
2004. "Η μεταφυσική διάσταση της συνθετικής τραγουδιστής φωνής στο έργο Mortuos Plango-Vivos Voco (J. Harvey, 1980)". Πολυφωνία
no. 4: (Spring): 58–74.
* Harvey, Jonathan. 1981. "''Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco'': A Realization at IRCAM". ''Computer Music Journal'' 5, no. 4 (Winter): 22–24.
* Metzer, David Joel. 2009. ''Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century''. Music in the Twentieth Century 26. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. .
*
. 2018. "''Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco'' by Jonathan Harvey. An aural score, analysis and discussion". '008-MA, 009-MP, 0010-MP. Vision Edition. ISBN 978-0-9931761-3-5. ISMN: 979-0-9002315-4-3, 979-0-9002315-5-0.'
*Tutschku, Hans. 1999.
. PhD diss. Paris: Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV): École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
, ''CEC.sonus.ca''.
*Jaffé, Daniel.