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'The Division of Labour'

Wishart, Trevor

Authors

Trevor Wishart



Abstract

Based on a text from Adam Smith's 'The Wealth of Nations', describing the division of labour in a Scottish pin factory, the piece uses as its source a recording of this text spoken in a Glaswegian accent. The division of labour is then applied to the voice in a series of variations in the digital domain (e.g. resynthesis of the melodic-contour of the speech, canon-hocketing the time-shrunk syllables, texturing fragments cut from the tails of the syllables, generating "choral" textures from 'iteration' of groups of material, etc.). The human voice is the principal source material, and extensive use is made of special software tools developed by the composer both for personal use and also for the Composers Desktop Project (CDP). The piece now forms the first movement of the 3 movement work 'Fabulous Paris - a virtual oratorio'.

Citation

Wishart, T. (2007). 'The Division of Labour'. [CD]

Other Type Composition
Online Publication Date Aug 1, 2007
Publication Date Aug 1, 2007
Deposit Date Aug 2, 2007
Additional Information Duration: 18 minutes
Additional Information: Based on a text from Adam Smith's 'The Wealth of Nations', describing the division of labour in a Scottish pin factory, the piece uses as its source a recording of this text spoken in a Glaswegian accent. The division of labour is then applied to the voice in a series of variations in the digital domain (e.g. resynthesis of the melodic-contour of the speech, canon-hocketing the time-shrunk syllables, texturing fragments cut from the tails of the syllables, generating "choral" textures from 'iteration' of groups of material, etc.). The human voice is the principal source material, and extensive use is made of special software tools developed by the composer both for personal use and also for the Composers Desktop Project (CDP). The piece now forms the first movement of the 3 movement work 'Fabulous Paris - a virtual oratorio'. The world premiere of the complete 3-movement work was on 10 August 2007 at the Sound Travels Festival, Toronto. 'Fabulous Paris' is available on CD from the Electronic Music Foundation, or over the web from Digital Music Archives.

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