Antoine Brumel’s ‘Earthquake’ Mass (c.1497) is a stunningly intricate work of Renaissance-age choral music for twelve voices.
In response to Brumel’s work, Kathy Hinde collaborated with Mexican choir ‘Staccato’ to produce unique vinyl pressings of the vocal parts from the mass, which are played back on turntables adapted to physically respond to seismic data.
Playing on both the title of the work and Mexico’s seismic instabilities, she further splintered and disintegrated the vocal recordings, producing work that ties the emotional power of Brumel’s work to the ruptures of the world we inhabit 500 years later.
Following conversations with Mexico’s top seismologists, the installation is a response to scientific research, seismic data, and what it means to live in a country with the constant risk of earthquakes occurring at any time.
Beautiful, yet unsettling, this ultra-spatialised, sculptural sound installation presents glimpses of Brumel’s Earthquake Mass amongst a textural soundscape of vocal echoes and remnants. It is a poetic contemplation on the state of the planet.
