Susan Philipsz - Surround Me: A Song Cycle For The City Of London FLAC album

Tracklist

1	Weep O Mine Eyes
2	Lachrimae
3	Flow My Tears
4	New Oysters
5	New Oysters
6	Oh My Love
7	The Silver Swan

Notes

"Surround Me: A Song Cycle For The City of London can be heard in six locations, which can be visited in any sequence. A full tour of all locations takes around one hour.

The setting for this four-part madrigal is the desolate, elevated landscape of Moorfields Highwalk with its open courts and connecting passageways. The madrigal was said to be an attempt to imitate the sound of angels’ voices, one voice replacing the other as breath was drawn, to convey the illusion of continuous singing. The rise and fall of the voices in the madrigal suggests the ebb and flow of a tide that builds up to a crescendo, an ocean of tears rising and falling on a concrete shore.

The uniform surfaces of the glass façades at the junction of Milk Street and Russia Row create a series of visual and acoustic reflections. The Lachrimae is a seven part instrumental piece
based upon the image of a single falling tear. All seven Lachrimae have been interpreted and played independently, with each of the seven notes coming from its own individual speaker. The speakers are arranged throughout the space and for the most part the sound is abstract with the tune coming together in parts only to separate again.

In Daniel Defoe’s account of the plague in London he describes: Passing through Tokenhouse Yard, in Lothbury, of a sudden a casement violently opened just over my head, and a woman gave three frightful screeches, and then cried, ‘Oh! death, death, death!” in a most inimitable tone, which struck me with horror, and a chilliness in my very blood. There was nobody to be seen in the whole street, neither did any other window open, for people had no curiosity now in any case, nor could anybody help one another. The lyrics are a metaphor for the end of an era, the end of the madrigal or maybe the Elizabethan musical tradition. They could also symbolise the end of capitalism or more general feelings of mourning and loss."