Rapture

For Voice and Electronics -audio track

Composed and mixed by Gabrielle Dalsan

2024

‘Rapture’ is a piece for Electronics and Voice, exploring witchcraft, and the damage inflicted by the witch trials. I write about the psychological destress of witchcraft, as well as presenting the essence of the witch itself. The symbol of ‘witch’ invokes immense fear, terror, and despair - an aura that I attempt to emulate within my work. The main body of the piece will embody this spirit as though it is real. The spirit is introduced by an eruption of provocative vocalisations, hissing, mutterings and heaving. The use of primal, disturbing and darkly feminine sounds is a revolt against the structured traditionally ‘pretty’ form of the female voice that we hear in so many compositions.

I gathered field recordings of birds, gates, trains and screams to accompany my vocal part. I accompanied my singing with a poem ‘After He Called Her a Witch’ by Susan Ludvigson and by my own written lyrics in the latter half of the piece. The piece begins with a recording of clicking fingers and clapping in a rhythmically loose and unsettling manner, to emulate the presence of dance within witchcraft. Towards the end of the piece, my voice enters high registers – resembling the sounds of nymphs, spirits and ghosts of the lives lost to the witch trials. The recording has a deliberate ‘un-kept’ quality to it, using my phone to record many items, and leaving the vocal pad with abrupt entries to emphasise the unpolished nature of witchcraft.

Part one: a ‘May-Day’, Midsommar, Pagan quality. The music uses strings to convey a medieval folklore.

Part two: The release of witchcraft – the witch is embodied.

Part 3: The witch dissipates, but a thread of ghosts and nymphs appear.