Chorus, c.6’, 2023

I discovered this poem by luck when browsing the poetry collection in a bookshop in Fremantle. The poem comes from a book titled Decadence, by Thuy On. When I first saw the poem, it immediately struck me. Formed entirely from one word —‘murmuration’— it’s both visual and poetic, in a meta sense. Letters and syllables dispersed asymmetrically down the page gradually form the full word, combining into a single shape—a beautiful visual evocation of a flock of starlings shifting and gliding in the sky.

The music is generated from a simple canon and follows the formation of the word as it appears in the poem. I use glissandi, the technique of sliding between pitches, to evoke the image of a murmuration of birds, ascending, turning and descending. At the full statement of ‘murmuration’, the choir divides further with each singer repeating the word at their own pace. Here, the chorus is felt more texturally yet still moves as a unified body of sound.

I’d like to thank Thuy On for her beautiful poem and for her permission to write the piece that it inspired.

Listen to an excerpt: