Myth

1986

amplified SATB + live electronics

12’00”

Much of the work of the author Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) takes as its stimulus the drudgery of everyday living. This is at its most vivid in his essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1941) - the mythical Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to push a large boulder up a hill; at the top, the boulder would roll back down and the process would then be repeated, ad infinitum.

Myth takes certain concepts and ideas, as well as portions of text from Le Mythe de Sisyphe and L'Envers et l’Endroit (1935), also by Camus. Text is often fragmented by splitting words (e.g., “Sisyphe” and “absurde”) into their constituent phonemes. Further fragmentation is obtained by then distributing these phonemes amongst the four singers, sometimes interspersed with other sounds, thus creating “new” text.

The four singers are amplified and treated using two signal processing devices, running reverberation, delay and pitch-change programs.