A Murmur in the Trees is a half hour piece by Eve Beglarian for twenty-four double basses to play in a grove of trees. The title is inspired by a poem by Emily Dickinson. The music was created by treating a piece of birch bark as a musical score, where the lines on the birch bark are notes that are read at the rate of one-third inch per minute, said to be the speed at which plant signals travel. The y-axis has been mapped to notes in the overtone series, so the basses are playing open strings and up to seven harmonics above each string, creating a palette of 32 possible pitches.
For the first fifteen minutes, the basses are spread out along the path as widely as possible. Wherever you stand in the path, you will hear some basses nearly, and some quite far away. You are welcome to move up and down the path, and where you choose to stand will change what you hear. There is no need to rush all the way to the end of the path. There is time to experience everything.
After fifteen minutes, the bass players will very gradually move up the path, and you, too, might want to find yourself at the upper end of the path by the end of that following ten minutes. Then, for the last five minutes of the piece, the basses will surround the audience in a circle (or maybe an oval, depending on how many of you there are), and the sound will radiate inward over all of us listening.
Development of A Murmur in the Trees was sponsored by a 2020 grant from the MAP Fund for Eve and Robert Black to do a project with visual artist Aviva Rahmani and choreographer Yoshiko Chuma, a project that took a different form due to COVID-19. Matt Sargent created computer algorithms to translate the birch bark and generate individual parts for the players. Ryan McMasters created the twenty-four audio guide tracks that serve as performance parts for the players. Special thanks also to Isaiah K. Webb, who, on a hike with Eve and Yoshiko last summer, gave Eve the piece of birch bark that became the score of A Murmur in the Trees.
There is no score of the piece in standard notation. Performers listen to audio guide tracks that give them the information they need to play the piece. Parts range in difficulty so that even very beginning students and amateur community members can participate alongside professional musicians.
If you are interested in presenting A Murmur in the Trees in your community, please reach out to us here.
DETAILS
- Instrumentation: bass
- Ensemble Size: large ensemble
- Duration: 25-40 minutes
- Electronics: No Electronics
- Video: No
- Project(s): Emily D
- Year: 2021