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black drums rolled (2019)

by Ewan Stefani

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Musically, the work explores the disruption and abrupt termination of repeated patterns to suggest short episodes of pulses and rhythms that are never fully resolved or developed.

Most of the sounds in the work come from recordings that I made from inside an upright piano, and inside a clock. These sources are juxtaposed with short samples of Baroque string orchestra. Patches in Reaktor and Max were used to create spatial movement (in the 8-channel version) and rhythmic modulation of playback position within each sound.

The title of the piece comes from a line in Norman MacCaig’s poem ‘Sounds of the Day’, where the dark sounds in the poem, and silence that follows them represent the intense pain of grief and loss. The relevant extract from the poem is:

When the black drums rolled, it was water
falling sixty feet into itself.
When the door
scraped shut, it was the end
of all the sounds there are.
You left me
beside the quietest fire in the world.

(Norman MacCaig)

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released February 7, 2019

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Ewan Stefani Leeds, UK

Ewan Stefani is a composer, musician and academic based in the UK.

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