Lycoming
I. - Enigma
II. - Ready Ready
Lycoming is named after a small town by Lake Ontario in New York state in the US. The piece is in two movements that are both inspired by cryptography.
The first movement, Enigma, is written around a kind of a mantra, where I tied the words of of the mantra to different musical parameters. Then I removed the mantra, like when paper mache is stuck onto a balloon to make a bowl when the balloon is removed. The movement’s title is both a reference to the Enigma cypher, which was used by the Germans in WWII and Edward Elgar’s Enigma variations, which are variations to a hidden melody.
The second movement, Ready Ready, is performed alongside a recording of a numbers station. Numbers stations were open short wave radio stations that were used by secret services and spies to communicate in the Cold War. The recording used in the piece comes from the the collection “The Conet Project - Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations”, where it is the first track of cd 3.
The piece was written for Nordic Affect in 2021 with support from Tónskáldasjóður RÚV og STEFs.