Chant.wav is one of two pieces composed at the Canberra Composer’s Collective’s summer camp in January in 2015. During the camp we were introduced to the program Pure Data. With a basic understanding of Pure Data’s coding language we, perhaps somewhat recklessly, chose to use patches we had created or found online to alter the same 30 seconds of Gregorian chant (also found online). The three performers (Brendan Keller Tuberg, Hayden Fritzlaff and Benjamin Drury) each had a patch which somewhat aleatorically interacted with the soundfile, roughly every 30 seconds a performer would open a new tab of pure data adding a new layer to the sound. Each performer was running to an individual speaker placed around the room
The piece was performed at Big Band Room in the ANU School of Music by Brendan Keller Tuberg, Hayden Fritzlaff and Benjamin Drury on the 30th of Jannuary 2015.
In a lot of ways the piece acts as a kind of enquiry into the nature of ritual in art music performance.
Video by Alexander Hunter:
benjamin drury 