SAUNDERS
Us Dead Talk Love
for Alto Voice, Tenor Saxophone, Electric Guitar, Korg Organ and Percussion
Score
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REBECCA SAUNDERS
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Us Dead Talk Love
for Alto Voice, Tenor Saxophone, Electric Guitar, Korg Organ and Percussion with texts from A Primer for Cadavers by Ed Atkins (2021)
Dedicated to Noa Frenkel and Ensemble Nikel
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Commissioned by Südwestrundfunk, Casa da Música, November Music, GRAME – Centre National de Création Musicale, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Felicja Blumental International Music Festival
First performance on 17 October 2021 at the Donaueschinger Musiktage by Noa Frenkel and Ensemble Nikel
Us Dead Talk Love (2021) - Programme Text for alto, saxophone, e-guitar, Korg organ and percussion
Text from A Primer for Cadavers by the ar@st Ed Atkins, excerpts from the chapters Air for Concrete and Us Dead Talk Love
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A Primer for Cadavers by Ed Atkins is an intoxica@ng virtuosic preoccupa@on with the body, with flesh, with transience and fluidity; a stream of consciousness which immediately spoke to me. It is at @mes palpable, close, in@mate and daun@ngly present, and then the reader is thrown into its urgent dense ver@ginous depths, a breathless sensuality that is both en@cing and shocking. Exploring this text provided the basis of the piece, this and the extraordinary voice of Noa Frenkel and the wonderful musicians of the Nikel Ensemble, to all of whom the piece is dedicated.
Some excerpts from Air for Concrete
If I nurse the word in my mouth and on my lips and with my throat - if I shape it, turn it in the right fashion…. want to make you aware of my mouth. I want to map my mouth comprehensively using the word `smoke´, and make you, you know, `breathe´ it.
want to make the word lap about and plot the posi@on of every surface in there. In my mouth. And, so turned, carefully release the word, and the word fanning out into the cool evening air, in the s@ll gulf between my mouth and your sexy liOle ear, coagula@ng as it goes, thickening, so that when it arrives at your ear, it´s ONLY JUST. Turning into maOer and it barely makes it on such hardening bakelite wings… The word has been fashioned by me to fit perfectly inside your convoluted ear. Snugly: It´s a tailored word - every surface of is ever-stouter body correla@ng with every surface of your diminishing inner ear - prodding, caressing purposefully… - for the re-forma@on of the word `smoke´, which convulses up to your brain, then swerves leX and down into your gorgeous mouth.
So long as you´ve tried a mouth out before, so to speak; so long as you´ve let stuff in, expelled stuff : shoved a salty finger in there...; suffered an ulcer or a cut or biOen a lump of cheek clean off; temporarily disabled the tongue with a bite meant for other, dead meat; burnt your tongue...; DETAINED something in there - smoke, an egg, a momentary orb of spring water; …to have some apprecia@on of the complexity of the tongue. To have licked an ice cream, a plate, soXened wood, a clitoris, a stamp, a wound, a penis, etc. - So long as you can appreciate something of the mouth and the tongue´s hegemony, then when that word "smoke" reaches into you and reveals its shape and weight and the ways in which these correspond to my s@nking mouth — you should be fine materialising it, making it JELL.
have tried to swallow words. I have tried to force them down I´ve tried to cosset them, swaddle them in saliva to give them a figh@ng chance.
I´ve found the ins@nc@ve thing is to just, um, BREATHE, the word.....smoke is too much like air, is too much like nothing. What liOle body there is is predominantly visual - a liOle scent - a liOle s@ng in the eyes - but no real weight, no splashing turd. You should try to swallow it properly…You may choke a liOle at first - you may gag.….something there, something taking shape.,,,thining-up, becoming itself, solidifying, fleshing-out, thickening. And in an instant - and as your tongue spasms impercep@bly - you stuff wads of STUFF around the consituent leOers of the words; drape steaks of STUFF over the crossbar of the "A": pack sausages of STUFF into the snaked scaffold of the ´s´. Certain licks will taOoo, so careful.
… Your tongue laps this way and that, gesturing, enac@ng that convulsive spell to summon the body of the word while simutaneously expunging its symbolic order. Your tongue calling upon the word to shrug off its fears, its aspira@ons, its fucking being! - Your tongue the merry murderer. Sidng there now, in your ignorant mouth, feigning immobility when truth be told it´s the most mobile thing I can think of. Picture the uncanny swaying of a cobra before a strike - only looking like a mole rat - only speckled, flecked with those marks of abuse (chilli, smoking, coffee, cripplingly sour gummy sweets, etc.), worn with pride, as a testament to its impressive grimoire […]. And so the swaddled…word is swallowed, whole…, to be dispersed by various acids, ammonias, bleaches, pressures, etc…; absorbed into the bloodstream and carried, illicitly, about the body, swept along that cardiac @de, to affect its changes, to transform, ul@mately, every single cell of your oblivious body into something always-already appended - synac@cally but also cys@cally - with the affec@ve word. It is hard to describe, darling. Moul@ng.
that atomic universality that says we are all of us, everyday, inhaling par@cles of dead people´s bodies. Microscopic flakes…, breathed in, clogging your lungs, fluOering around the mouth of the trachea, seeding your capillares…- a shadow inside you, an abverse-you, pressed python-close to your arterial walls, nose bent, eyes bulging, tongue lolling - pressed as if against a photocopier. Again, impossible to tell; you can see nothing in there. Inside you, an abandoned colour darkroom.
An ovoid of mercury placed on the back of your hand - slowly, impossibly, passing through said hand over the course of a year, maybeemerging, birthed from invisible s@gmata on the palm and dropping to the linoleum floor like a faOed grub only having shrunk, having shed some of its whatever inside your hand, your blood obliging-shuOling those fugi@ve, glimmering globules ... - glimmering globules sliding about your body. TOUCHING the sides, inducing the thick ache in your veins and that dull thrum in your brain.
Swallowing words like snot, amassed on that bridge between your gagging throat and your nose. You´re filling up on that stuff. Careful… Words, thing´d words, will not cure - neither are they pallia@ve. They are func@onless, meaningless - a symptom of their becoming, their deviant unshackling from deference; a symptom of their materializa@on. They are themselves, irreducible - etymologically, even - no,
especially - when surging round your guts….That the inges@on of words…through your gut, through your mouth, through the flowering of those par@cular macrobio@c funghi inside your cess-piOed, ransacked innards. They materialize through your body. Surrounded by gratuitous substance in the mouth; the word is changed, inflected so much by your par@cularly thick accent, your thick slab of tongue, your bee-stung lips, your mucoid throat… - so much so that it cannot but appear.
… The prospect of drowning in the Earth, like being buried at sea: absurd.
Shits odd words as uncut diamonds.....
The day uOerly ruined; Dark maOer; liquourice; A corvid´s face; A cavity harbouring a breathing thing ...a fucking lie;
An entrea@ng gesture that descends into anger;....
The first blooming of a blackeye: the outraged red maturing, decaying; That last cigareOe - ever, apparently - ...;
The smoke, mean, streaming from every orifice, solidifying into the form of a dung beetle on your delghkul ear;....
A fucking truth.
An eye socket, gaping, eye, the eye dangling treacherous on its op@c nerve, fiddling in the rear;…
The submarine sight of the pa@ent; Pitch;
The place furthest from the surface inside you.
… The shed skin of the word has drfited up to form a lens over your eyes. Your ears are clogged with the same - ambient sound is translated, filtered. Compressed, chorused, distorted, bit-crushed, reverbed, etc. - The euphoric acous@cs of a CATHEDRAL OF THE FUTURE. And everything looks way too sharp, too crisp, too juicy. A lucidity to the visual world that was not there before - everything is now too close, too vivid, as if pressed on your eye - as if circumven@ng the whole eye thing and lunging straight to the brain, groping and pummelling every surface with unmediated bluntness. Everything is gratuitously PRESENT. Sound describes itself excessively - too many adjec@ves, superla@ves - a thesaural superabundance of descrip@ons, analogues - all the while oscilla@ng wildly between gut-wrenching suzb-bass and piercing treble- Parenthe@cal confusion! Gramma@cal and syntac@cal confusion, also! - What the fuck to do with a semi-colon? When to use brackets, and when to use dashes? - In the sensory confusion none of this maOers, and the response is simply to use everything with impunity, fearlessly, expressively! Satura@on is mode. YOU BASTARD!
Air for Concrete, Ed Atkins, A Primer for Cadavers, Fitzcarraldo Edi@ons.
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p1 My mouth.
I want to nurse, nurse the word
p2 n—i—a in my mouth
On my, on my lips, my my lips.
p3 With my throat
I want to map my mouth, map my mouth with the word “smoke”, with the word “smoke”. Breathe it.
p4 I, carefully, careful.
My mouth releases the word. Wow! Lap about , fan, fanning out, out in the eve´ning air.
If
p5 I shape it, turn it, Na! Nurse the word, word.
M—In my mouth on my lips with my throat.
I want
p6 only just!
In the sPll gulf between my mouth and your sexy liQle ear!
Tailored, pro-, prodding, caressing purposefully. CoagulaPng as it goes, thickening.
A tailor´d word, ev´ry surface of it.
Do you even have a mouth?
p7 To have licked an ice cream, a plate, soWened wood, a clitoris ecetera. Word.
Ice cream, a plate, soWened wood, clitoris, stamp, a wound, a penis ecetera.
So long as you can appreciate my mouth, my lips, my p8 smoke.
Wait, wait!
I have tried to swallow words, swallow words. Force them down, co-, cosset them, swaddle them in saliva, give them a fighPng chance.
p9 Appreciate something of the mouth and the tongue´s hegemony, when that word “smoke" reaches into you and reveals its shape, and reveals its weight and the shape, weight.
The ways in which they correspond to my sPnking mouth, my, my sPnking mouth.
Ma-, making it JELL, JELL!
p10 Breathe the word, yeah!
Smoke! is too much like air, is too much like nothing! What liQle body there is, is predominantly visuala liQle scent, a liQle sPng in the, sPng in the eyes.
p11 Your tongue (ngue) (lll) laps this way and that, gesturing, enacPng that… Your tongue calling upon the word, the word. Body, summon the body of the word.
p12 Wa! We are all of us ev´ryday inhaling parPcles. Microscopic flakes of dead peoples bodies: skin, clogging your lungs. Suck up enough skin.
Shadows inside you.
p13 Ovoid, ovoid, ovoid of mercury, mercury on your, your hand, your hand.
Your blood, blood, glimmering globules touching, in-, inducing, p14 sliding, glimmering.
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Your veins, ache in your veins. Dull, dull thrum in your brain, thrum in your brain.
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p15 Abandoned!
FluQering around the mouth of the trachea, seeding your capillaries.
Shadow inside you, an abverse-you, pressed python-close to your arterial walls, nose bent, eyes bulging, tongue lolling aganist a photocopier python close.
p16 Ng—i—ö—u now oh mouth. Ing, ing, ing, the ingesPon of words through your gut. Through your gut and your body.
Through p17 your mouth, your body.
Through your eye, eye, eyes, sur-, surging!
p18 Through the flowering funghi inside the word, the word has changed, changed and inflected by your bee-stung lips, mucoid throat, slab of tongue, tongue. Bee-stung lips, mucoid throat.
p19 Swallowed, swallowed and dispersed and absorbed. Swallowed whole.
absorbed into your blood, your blood.
p20 Swept along that cardiac Pde to transform ev´ry cell of your oblivious body.
Pitch: the place furthest from the surface inside you, inside you. Yes, something else…
p21 Something else altogether, the prospect of drowning in the Earth, like being buried at sea, (absurd,) absurd!
Drown, drowning in the Earth. Bur-, bur-, buried at sea.
p22 DriW, driWing.
The shed skin of the word, word p23 over over over your eyes. Over over over your eyes. DriWing, forming over your eyes.
p24 i——your ears are clogged with the same same sound, sound. Ambient sound, too close, too vivid, p25 too cold, dea- dead.
A lucid, a lucidity to the world.
p26 No no not no not there, no not there before. Too full, too close. Too
p27 woo, woo (too) vivid, sharp, too sharp, crisp, too crisp, too juicy!
p28 Swallowing words like snot amassed between your gagging throat and your nose! Filling up on that stuff. Words, thing´d words, funcPonless, meaningless - a sympthom of their becoming, deviant unshackling.
MaterializaPon of a word.
They are themselves irreducible when surging round your guts.
Shits of words like uncut diamonds.
p29 A lie, its a lie, fucking truth.
Shed, shed of skin
p30 inside you.
An eye socket gaping, eye, the eye dangling. Treacherous on its opPc nerve, fiddling in the rear.
p31 I nurse the word in my mouth on my lips
p32 with my throat.
I shape it, turn it, weigh, weigh it, send the word, spin-, spin-
p33 -ning, the word spinning off
Yi—our your blood, breath, brain.
Your blood.
p34 your your lips, hands, lips, mouth, throat.
Your your kiss.
Your ears,
p35 your eyes, your skin, skin, fat, skin, fat, flesh.
Your your your spit, shit.
Your nerves, nerves.
Mouth
p36 Tell, show, reveal the word.
Weight.
Cosset them, swaddle them. It reveals its weight, its shape.
p37 eyes, eye, eyes, your eyes. Ka—-o. Ah.
p38 The word has been fashioned by by me to fit perfectly inside your convuluted ear snugly, its a tailored word it is ev´ry surface of its ever stouter body correlaPng with ev´ry ev´ry surface of its ever-diminishing ear!
InstrucPons for the reformaPon of the word smoke, which convulses up to your brain, then swerves leW and down into your gorgeous p39 mouth!
Your tongue calling upon the word to shrug off its fears its aspiraPons, fucking being!
Your tongue the merry murderer! The shed of skin has driWed up to form a lens over over your eyes. Your eyes are clogged ambient sound is translated, fliltered, compressed, chorused, distorted, bit-crushed, reverbed. The euphoric acousPcs.
p40 Cathedral of the future! ev´rything too sharp, too crisp, too juicy, too close, too vivid. A lucidity to the visual world, world!
Pressed on your eye, lunging straight to the brain, groping and pummelling its surface with unmeditated bluntness
Eh! Ev´rything is gratuitously PRESENT! Excessively thesaural superabundance. Oh, oscillaPng wildly.
p41 Gut wrenching sub-bass and piercing treble. ParenthePcal. GrammaPcal (and) synthePcal confusion! What the fuck to do with a semi-colon! In the sensory confusion none of this maQers use ev´rything with impunity, fearlessly, expressively. SaturaPon is the mode. YOU BASTARD!
p42 Make you breathe it.
The place furthest from the surface.
Inside you.
From Air for Concrete, A Primer for Cadavers by Ed Atkins Fitzcarraldo EdiPons
UsDeadTalkLove(2021)
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Veryslow,expansive,spacious,alwaysmovingon q=40–46max.
Veryslow,expansive,spacious,alwaysmovingon q=40–46max.
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Microscopicflakes ofdeadpeoples bodies,clogging your(lungs)
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& sfp
seedingyour capillaries shadowinsideyou, > o > æ æ æ anobverseyou,pressed python-closetoyour arterialwalls,nosebent, eyesbulging, +Pizz. sfp ‘ Wild! tonguelolling againsta photocopier pythonclose
sfp arterial walls,nose
f
bent,eyes bulging,tongue lollinga-
veryexpansive q=40
veryexpansive q=40
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Thewordischanged andinflectedby yourslaboftongue, bee-stunglips +/-Pizz.
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heavypressure,quasi-spoken. intense+complex,followNoa'svoice!
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Theprospectofdrowning intheEarthlike beingburiedatsea.
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Rebecca Saunders
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Rebecca Saunders (b. 1967) studied with Wolfgang Rihm at the Musikhochschule in Karlsruhe, Germany, and for a doctorate in composition with Nigel Osborne at Edinburgh University. She lives in Berlin. Saunders’ numerous composition prizes include three Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards, two BASCA British Composer Awards and the 2019 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. Her works have been performed at festivals including the Huddersfield Festival, the Berlin Biennale and the Darmstadt International Summer Course. In 2009 she became a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts. Saunders’ works include chroma, for chamber groups distributed throughout the performance space; void, a concerto for percussion duo and orchestra; and Yes, a spatial performance for soprano, 19 soloists and conductor.
Rebecca Saunders (*1967) studierte Komposition bei Wolfgang Rihm an der Musikhochschule Karlsruhe und promovierte an der Edinburgh University bei Nigel Osborne. Sie lebt in Berlin. Saunders wurde für ihr Schaffen vielfach ausgezeichnet, u. a. mit drei Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards, zwei BASCA British Composer Awards sowie mit dem Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis 2019. Ihre Werke erklangen bei zahlreichen Festivals, wie dem Huddersfield Festival, der Berliner Biennale und den Darmstädter Ferienkursen für Neue Musik. 2009 wurde sie zum Mitglied der Berliner Akademie der Künste ernannt. Zu ihren Werken zählen chroma für räumlich verteilte Kammergruppen, ein Konzert für Schlagzeugduo und Orchester mit dem Titel void sowie die Raumperformance Yes für Sopran, 19 Solisten und Dirigent.