2015
As a kid, I didn’t really understand the definition of death. I used to pray before bed for all my loved ones to be with me forever, I called for hope.
I still remember the day when my grandfather passed away. 14 years ago, that one day in February was just another ordinary day for me, but it was also the day when I realized that forever does not exist.
March 2021, I went to my grand-aunt's funeral. I thought of my grandmother who is gradually getting old, and many questions popped into my head.
I wondered how long it takes for one to mature enough to fully understand and accept that farewell is normal, that it is a natural part of life. How do old elderly people feel, having gone through their entire lives sharing stories with family and friends, now having to watch their loved ones leaving one by one as they stand on the edge of time?
Roeliff Brinkerhoff once said, “Funerals are for the living.” I also wonder about how the departed ones are doing now. Will they still remember us? Who still remembers the memories of their existence and questions how the afterlife will look like?
For my previous Recital Project last year ‘Time In a Frame: From the Past to the Music We Now See’, I translated musical elements into visual art designs for CD covers and visual performance, reinterpreting the music we cannot see through visualizations. This time I would like to experience the ability of music to evoke memories, reminiscing all loved ones both living and gone as a conclusion of my long journey until now.
Last
Salutations
“ Funerals are for the living. If we have not done for the dead while they were yet in flesh, it is too late; let the matter pass at the grave. Day by day we should live for those who are to die and live so that we may die for those who are to live. Funerals are for the living.”
Roeliff Coe Brinkerhoff
lawyer, editor, and owner of the Mansfield Herald
(1828 - 1911)
Die Tomorrow (2017)
Before the last day of our lives,
it’s always just a normal day.
A film by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit
From death incidents in newspapers to 6 short stories without any connections in between. This film portrays a normal day of people before the last moment of their lives, and a documentary about the perspective of death from different generations.
The Discovery (2017)
Have you ever wondered what the afterlife looks like?
A film by Charlie McDowell
If we are living in a world where humans found the existence of the afterlife? The desire made the number of suicide grow, and will you try to stop it?
This movie invites viewers to question the boundaries between the lives we are experiencing now and the lives after we stop existing. The Discovery reflects on our wishes, on the human condition; we all want to fix incidents that have already happened in the past, but none of us can fix what is already behind us. Every one of us tries to find the answer to the big question in life; what happens after we die. Ambition and curiosity make people try to search for the answer to their lives.
5 Stages of Grief
The theory of the Five Stages of Grief was first introduced in the book called On Death and Dying, written by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969. She was inspired to research this work by terminally ill patients and their intimate people.
She identified those 5 stages as follow:
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance
However, Kübler-Ross had later stated that the stages are not a predictable progression. These five stages of the process can be experienced in any order and any amount of time or may experience only some of the stages as opposed to all of them. It was included in any form of grief and loss.
Born in a literate family, Schumann's father August Schumann was a bookseller and a publisher. The influence of this poetic perspective combined with his own musical characteristics is clearly deployed in his compositions.
Schumann started composing at the age of seven and wrote an essay on the aesthetics of music at the age of fourteen. He got inspiration from various German poets including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe whom Schumann later deeply engaged in setting the tragic play Faust to music called Scenes from Goethe’s Faust between the years 1844 and 1853. It was during that period that depression affected Schumann’s health. He began to be overwhelmed by the apprehension of death. He also stated in his diary that he heard the pitch A5 resonating in his ears. It was later suggested that a tumor at the base of the brain had created this musical auditory hallucination.
Despite all the depression, exhaustion, and obsession that Schumann endured, all of which were reflected through his Symphony No.2, Op.61 in 1847, he continued to compose a wide variety of music. In the terminal stage of his life in 1854, hallucination symptoms increased, he attempted to commit suicide by jumping from a bridge into the Rhine river but was rescued by boatmen. He went to an asylum for treatment and confinement and remained there until his final day of life.
It has been said that Schumann's family experienced the consequences of depressive states: his father suffered a nervous breakdown and died in 1826, around the same time, his mother Johanna Schnabel endured depression, and his sister Emilie Schumann took her own life.
Robert Schumann
(1810–1856)
Goethe's Faust (between 1844-1853)
A tragic play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, made Schumann deeply engaged in setting this play to music.
- A turbulent stage for his health
Schumann's Symphony No.2, Op.61 (1847)
reflects his state of unease and neurasthenia
Family Drama
Schumann’s father had a nervous breakdown,
his mother endured bouts of depression,
and his sister Emilie took her own life.
His suicide attempt (1854)
Schumann Tried to jump from the bridge into the Rhine river, and was rescued by boatmen
Schumann was seized with fits of shivering and an apprehension of death, after his return to Germany from a concert tour in Russia
Psychiatric disorder
Schumann's Diary
stated that Schumannsuffered persistently from note A5 sounding in his ears
(which later hypothesize about a tumor at the base of the brain that created musical auditory hallucinations)
Sergei Rachmaninoff
(1873–1943)
Though Rachmaninoff is widely known as one of the greatest composers and pianists to have ever lived, he suffered a lot from grief and engaged with the death of people throughout his life. Rachmaninoff was born in a musical and aristocratic family and soon displayed his potential as a talented artist.
Rachmaninoff's childhood artistic vision was soon affected by dramatic turns, after his father squandered the family fortune, his mental stability was damaged and he was left traumatized. His two sisters, Sofiya died of diphtheria in 1883, and later in 1885, Yelena died of pernicious anemia. He also lost his inspiration for composing after the death of his idol Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1893. His depression worsened in his early career after the debut of his first symphony, Op.13, which premiered in 1897 received unfavorable reactions from the critics. This incident resulted in Rachmaninoff suffering a very intense depressive episode. In his adult life, death still tore many people from his life. Alexander Scriabin, his fellow composer died from blood poisoning in 1915, his professor Sergei Taneyev and his father passed away from a heart attack respectively in 1915 and 1916.
The emotions caused by the incidents that affected Rachmaninoff's life were implied in his compositions. He used the musical theme Dies Irae (day of wrath); a Latin hymn in a mass for the dead first introduced in the 13th century, in most of his compositions.
Deaths in his family
Death of Scriabin
(1915)
His 1st debut of Symphony No.1 (1895)
Suffering from various medical ailments
Death of Sergei Tanayev (1915)
Death of Tchaikovsky (1893)
his sisters, Sofiya - diphtheria (1883),
Yelena - pernicious anemia (1885)
his father - heart attack (1916)
marfan syndrome
(caused back pain, myopia, stiffness of hands, bruising of fingertips)
He loses his fellow composer from blood poisoning
The loss of his idol affected Rachmaninoff who lost his inspiration and will to compose
His professor died of a heart attack
suffered a depressive episode which also caused his loss of interest in composing, along with nerovegatative symptoms
The theme of Dies Irae has since become a very common recurring theme in many horror and thriller movies. This simple four-note motif conveys an atmosphere of dread and despair.
The Shining
(1980)
A film by Stanley Kubrick, based on Stephen King’s novel. Wendy Carlos, composer of the soundtrack also borrowed the Dies Irae theme at the very beginning of the film.
This classic film first starts by slowly narrating the storyline with simple and mysterious details, and it gradually grows more intense as the film progresses. Jack Torrance gets a job as a caretaker at the remote Overlook Hotel during the winter recess and his mental health gradually deteriorates as he spirals into madness. The isolation leads him to hallucinate as he sees a crowd of guests in the spacious ballroom of this empty hotel.
The ballroom scenes in this film evoke a nostalgic atmosphere with the use of old 1920s classic songs and ambient sounds.
Recording Medium:
A Time Storage
Humans invented the process of a recording medium to preserve time. The beauty of music is how it allows us to enter another dimension without space and time required. The combination of sounds and silence brings us to experience moments that are long passed or even only exist in imaginary dimensions.
The grain of old photographs distorts reality and our memories contributing to a sense of nostalgia. We experienced through a lot of stories in life, some of the past memories have faded as time goes by. Pictures capture the moments of time that remain forever in this world, helping us recall those moments once our memories have faded away.
The crackles of the record player also add another dimension to the musical experience, they capture the flesh of the existence of time, storing memories in the shape of a recording.
Leyland James Kirby (1974-present) also known as The Caretaker, is an ambient electronic musician working on exploring memory and its deterioration, nostalgia, and melancholia. The project, The Caretaker, was initially inspired by the ballroom scene in The Shining.
In his eleventh recording, Everywhere at the End of Time (2016-2019), consists of six studio albums that refer to six stages that depict the progression of dementia of a patient's disorder until the terminal stage of life. It evokes emotions and memories that are gradually distorted through time, which is portrayed by noise and emptiness.
Some other artists work with the aesthetics of recycling materials and evocative ambient.
William Basinski (1958-present) is an avant-garde composer raised in a Catholic family, he stated that he had the magical musical experience from the church from a very young age. He also got inspiration from the minimalist composer Steve Reich and the ambient artist Brian Eno and. He began to develop his own melancholic and meditative style by experimenting with the use of old tape loops.
Lamentations (2020)
This album consists of 12 tracks that depict the feeling of grieving that mourning and keeping looping.
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For Whom the Bell Tolls
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The Wheel of Fortune
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Paradise Lost
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Tear Vial
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O, My Daughter, O, My Sorrow
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Passio
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Punch and Judy
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Silent Spring
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Transfiguration
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All These Too, I, I Love
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Please, This Shit Has Got To Stop
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Fin
Philip Jeck (1952-present) is a composer and multimedia artist. He equipped the uses of antique turntables and vinyl records and looped them with electronic effects.
7 (2003)
This album consists of 7 songs, and it gives us a nostalgic feeling to our memory of the past.
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Wholesome
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Museum
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Wipe
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Bush Hum
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Now You Can Let Go
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Some Pennies
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Veil
I found the aesthetics of this type of ambient music appealing, the evocative blurred textures it generates take me to a parallel dimension where I can temporarily leave the real world. The way that ambient music conveys our faded memories to become lighten is very interesting and I want to explore to understand its aesthetics.
In this project, I would like to explore the theme of loss and grief from a matter of time, people that left us to the afterlife leaving behind memories for the living to remember. I also want to explore the aesthetic of recorded sound as it blurs and distorts our memories to gain a deeper understanding of the connections between sounds and visuals and the impact of the different technologies that have captured the memories of each generation.
By connecting the stories of the composers, Robert Schumann, and Sergei Rachmaninoff, I would like to also explore my theme by collecting fragments of their piano pieces that are part of my repertoire, combining performance with sounds and visuals to awaken past memories.
Besides developing the necessary skills to produce a performance combining live piano, visuals, and pre-recorded sonic experiments, I would like to be able to understand the beauty of music and art, to interpret and reinterpret music from a deeper perspective.