Music for a Victorian Museum

© Roger Eno

Ipswich Museum
15th June until 18th July
FREE Admission

Roger Eno, a well known ambient music producer, has produced a groundbreaking piece of work entitled ‘Music for a Victorian Museum’ that you can hear at Ipswich Museum from 15th June until 18th July.
The piece uses a diverse range of instruments and original techniques to help produce a composition that could be different on every play!

‘Music for a Victorian Museum’ uses conventional instruments including clarinet, bass guitar, electric guitar, cello, acoustic piano and melodeon alongside electronic sources from a gamelan, orgel, harmonium and crystal. Roger has also utilised the now extremely scarce ‘Phono-Fiddle’, a one stringed instrument with sounding horn.
The method of ‘composition’ for this piece is far from traditional… all of the above elements act as individual parts of an ever changing piece.

There are 30 very simple ‘bricks’ from which the piece is built, 26 musical parts and 4 silences, all of varying lengths. Each part is designed to work musically with the others. These parts are then burned to four identical CDs that are, in turn, relayed by 4 separate CD players. The players are set to ‘Random’ and the piece writes itself.

Roger says of his work: “I call this system ‘aleatoric’ composition due to the starring role that chance plays in such pieces. The recorded silences allow for random periods of rest in each CD player thereby allowing the possibility of quite sparse periods during ‘performances’. This though is obviously up to chance....”

You could think of the above visually, with four sets of 26 different colours and 4 spaces - these constantly move themselves around forming an ever changing whole. This allows a staggering 810,000 possible combinations!
The CD units will be concealed in the Victorian Gallery at Ipswich Museum and will run for two one hour sessions each open day, 11.30am-12.30pm and 2.30pm-3.30pm (Tuesday - Saturday) for the three weeks from 15th June to 18th July.

Roger continues: “Music for a Victorian Museum was originally conceived as a show of thanks to members of staff who made my children so welcome to this extraordinary place. They allowed them to be interested.”

Roger Eno would like to thank Rachel Cannon and David Bucknall who played clarinet, ‘cello and phono fiddle as well as the present staff at the museum - in particular the Collections Manager Jayne Austin - for making this work utterly enjoyable to create, install and watch come to fruition

Ipswich Museum
High Street, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP1 3QH
FREE Admission
Open: Tuesday – Saturday, 10am to 5pm
www.cimuseums.org.uk  

ENDS

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For comment or opinion please contact Cllr. Bryony Rudkin
Ipswich Borough Council – Culture Portfolio Holder
Telephone: 07752 870697

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