On June 22nd, ships will gather on the North Sea to perform an ambitious musical score, marking the disappearance of the sound of the foghorn from the UK’s coastal landscape.
Foghorn Requiem is performed by three brass bands, ships at sea and the Souter Lighthouse Foghorn. Conducted and controlled from afar, ships will sound their horns to a score that will take into account landscape and the physical distance of sound.
The composition, performed live to audiences on the coastal cliffs, will be played across a space of several miles around Souter lighthouse.
Souter Lighthouse Foghorn
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=yl5YH2tZaKA
The mournful sound of a foghorn is a product of the landscape through which it travels, but up close the foghorn is probably the loudest, most exciting sound you will ever hear.
At a distance the sound is different, softened and transformed by a million echoes and interactions with the space through which it passes. The sound itself is an embodiment of the landscape and history of the place.
Owls Head Lighthouse Foghorn
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=GfNvV-Ro8VM
Artists Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway have collaborated with composer Orlando Gough to create an event that incorporates this sense landscape, memory and space into the musical composition.
New technology will allow ships horns several miles off shore to play together in time with musicians on shore, a gathering of three of the finest historical brass bands of the northeast, the Felling Band, the Westoe Band and the NASUWT Riverside Band.
Portland Lighthouse Diaphone Foghorn
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=-74YtxSHCjU
More than fifty ships and seventy-five musicians will gather at Souter Lighthouse to perform the Foghorn Requiem together with the Souter Lighthouse foghorn itself.
Foghorn Requiem is a celebration of the sound of the foghorn, and a gathering of people and ships coming together to listen to its majestic honk, one more time.
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Foghorn Requiem LIVE
Saturday, 22 June 2013 | 12:30 WET
Souter Lighthouse | Coast Road | Sunderland SR6 7NH | United Kingdom
foghornrequiem.org
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