ABC Classics 476 3174
Total timing 72’16”
Released 2008
First release 1999
Richard Barrett's Opening of the Mouth for ten instrumentalists, two singers and conductor with electronics and tape
Opening of the Mouth is a major collaboration between ELISION Ensemble, composer
Richard Barrett and installation artist Richard Crow. Premiered in 1997 in the abandoned Midland Railway Workshops outside Perth, Western Australia, the work draws its inferences from two sources; one belonging to this century, the poetry of Paul Celan, and another belonging to the early civilisation of ancient Egypt: the ritual of the ‘opening of the mouth’. This ritual was concerned with the giving of voice to the dead soul so that it could bear witness to the events of its lifetime: a restoration of speech becoming a restoration and recovery of human experience.
“…Barrett's ambitious work professes to use the poetry of Paul Celan to cleanse the language of artistic utterance in the century of the Holocaust … In lesser hands this might read as pretentious rather than ambitious, but Barrett's tortuous vocal lines and tremulous instrumental textures make for a work of real power and concentration. Barrett himself is on live electronics; among other remarkable performances is Carl Rosman's portrayal of Charon the boatman on bass clarinet; koto and Hardanger fiddle add folk-exotic colour.”
—Andy Hamilton, The Wire 202, December 2000
“…The effect is thus all the more striking when one of the vocalists in the section titled ‘Tenebrae’, halfway into the cycle, suddenly breaks into the most spine-chilling excesses this critic has ever heard; a horrible, but virtuoso, display of the most terrifying aspects of modern vocal technique, and in such excess applied to a text extraordinarily typical of Celan. The commentary, however, is usually left to the instrumental ensemble … It is in this wordless domain that desperate powerlessness finds expression, represented by a number of neck-breakingly spectacular and red-hot expressive solos, exquisitely performed by the nine musicians of the ensemble. It is here Barrett manages to approach the atrocities smouldering under the text, and just as Celan's poetry is a distortion of language, Barrett shows us a distorted picture of the well-known instrumental sounds. Here the musicians scratch on string instruments, howl, wail and whine on clarinets, as if the musicians have only meer remnants of technique and instruments left. It is a kind of music veritably tasting of ashes and dust…”
—Bendik Hagerup, Morgenbladet, Oslo, February 2000, translated by Thorbjørn Tønder Hansen, edited by Richard Haynes
Track overview:
Performers and production:
Deborah Kayser | soprano
Ute Wassermann | mezzo-soprano
Paula Rae | flute, piccolo, alto flute
Carl Rosman | clarinet in C, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, bass recorder
Peter Neville | percussion
Denise Wambsganß | mandolin, mandola
Daryl Buckley | 12-string guitar, electric guitar
Geoffrey Morris | 10-string guitar
Satsuki Odamura | koto, jushichigen
Mary Oliver | violin, viola, hardanger fiddle
Friedrich Gauwerky | violoncello
Simon Hewett | conductor
Richard Barrett | composer and sound artist
Richard Crow | installation artist
Executive producers: Robert Petterson, Lyle Chan, Daryl Buckley, Martin Buzacott
Recording prodcuers: Richard Barrett, Andrew Kurowski, Phillip Tagney
Recording engineers: Marvin Ware, Graeme Petrie-Brown
Mixing, editing and mastering: Richard Barrett, Daryl Buckley, Jim Atkins
Editorial and production manager: Katherine Kemp
Publications editor: Natalie Shea
Cover and installation images: Richard Crow
Photography: Ashley de Prazer, Heidrun Löhr
Booklet text: Peter McCallum, Daryl Buckley
Design: Imagecorp Pty Ltd
Recorded at BBC Maida Vale Studios, London, 6th to 9th April 1998. Mixed, edited and mastered at ABC Southbank Centre, Melbourne, 7th to 10th January 1999. Electronic music realised at the Institute of Sonology, The Hague, and at STEIM, Amsterdam; bass clarinet recordings by
ELISION gratefully acknowledges the support of the Music Fund of the Australia Council, the Federal Government‘s arts funding and advisory body. ELISION also acknowledges the assistance of Arts Queensland and The University of Queensland, through the office of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor John Hay.
ELISION would like to thank David Blenkinsop and Henry Boston (Festival of Perth), Wolfgang Meissner, Countess Ute Baudissin and Dagmar James (Goethe-Institut, Sydney), James Potts (British Council, Sydney), Andrew Kurowski (BBC Radio 3), Henrietta Brougham (United Music Publishers, and Akki van Ogtrop.
Richard Barrett would like to thank (apart from the performers and those named above) Joanna Bailie, Konrad Boehmer, Michael Hewes, Anne La Berge, Andrew Sparling, Stichting STEIM, Steven Kazuo Takasugi, Detlef Tewes and Frances-Marie Uitti for their essential contributions to the completion and realisation of Opening of the Mouth.
Opening of the Mouth was commissioned by the Festival of Perth, premiered at the Midland Railway Workshops, Perth, on the 3rd of March 1997 and is published by United Music Publishers Ltd, London.
℗ 1999 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
© 2008 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
