Creative Work

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We Move Through Sinking (2023) - 7 min.

Voice and multichannel electronics.

View score here.

“We Move Through Sinking” is an art song intended for immersive multichannel playback. The images in the lyrics come from my experience of early spring in the mountains of Western Massachusetts, when young ferns peek through mud and frost. The world swallows us even as we break free. 

The song follows a slowly ascending chord progression that grows dissonant as it unfurls. The melody is framed by two new digital instruments that transform the voice-and-piano paradigm of the traditional art song, Snyderphonics’s Vocodec and Many Arrows Music’s bitKlavier. Elements of each instrument are broken across the multichannel space, so listeners can move to the sounds that draw them in.

We Move Through Sinking

text by Christopher Douthitt

Feathers graze the lips

Antlers choke the tongue

We punched a hole through ice crystal fog

Sponge crystals spike the lung

The sun slacks

The moon zigs and zags

In bent light

We move we move we move

Moth split your iris

Fling mirrors to the sky

The flash of ultraviolet wings

Splash halo flares off the punctured lens

The air coils, the torso tangles and yet

We move we move and yet

We move through sinking

We move we move and yet

We move as though sinking

We move we move and yet

We move as though through sinking

As though we move though through sinking

We move even as though through sinking

We move