Confluence

Downstream ... that's another story

Downstream is an extensive piece by Karen Wimhurst, for nine wind players and recordings of Stour villagers made with Helen Weinstein. Karen writes: this work was a collaboration between the historian Helen Weinstein and myself. It was written for the Bournemouth Sinfonietta Wind Ensemble, led by Howard Nelson, and incorporates a CD which we made of material drawn from long conversations with people in the Stour Villages. The piece is written in six sections. These cover subjects such as washday and water supplies prior to having any water in houses, the passion of fishing, a spiritual sense of the river, concerns about water extraction and pollution, lifetimes of walking and bathing in the river. Someone is required to cue the CD tracks with the music and the director of the nonet is asked to follow speech cues. The music ranges from an abstract, textural approach to writing through to more tongue in cheek, dance type music.

In 1998 Helen and I were commissioned by BBC radio four to make two, half hour experimental programmes which creatively collaged oral histories together with a new and musical sense of people's voices in the community. Downstream is a development of this type of work in that it adds the dimension of live music.

Initial steps towards this composition began firstly with focussing on the medium and possibilities of writing for a wind nonet. At the same time I was working alongside Helen, interviewing people in the villages about their experiences of living on the River Stour.

Our interviewees ranged from the age of two to eighty plus, those starting out in life to a generation that had spent their "whole life on this little stretch of river". It is startling to find, not only the depth of knowledge which people have to offer you, (a real insight into their river running through four generations), but the gift of poetry and storytelling which people bring to a telling of their lives. You get an immediate sense of this whilst sitting in someone's living room or talking as you lean over a bridge together. However selecting and working on material brings a new sort of intimacy. You listen to interviews over and over again, get inside the dialogue, live the inflections and rhythm of word and meaning as you bring them together with the fabric of the music.

After doing fieldwork, Helen and I spent hours listening through to material, starting to sense the themes and connections that would generate a form and overall direction for the work. There's always too much material to use which, bit by bit, has to get whittled away to a practical time scale. As a documentary maker Helen brings an ear for the story and I try to discern a growing poetic and musical structure. We work on a pro tools system, which allows very fast editing, collaging and organising of material. After three days of listening through to material we tried to find an initial broad structure and I took some rough edits home to start composing around.

The work is experimental, as you want the music to complement, honour and bring to light the meaning and quality of the spoken word. On the other hand, the music needs to have enough depth and coherence to stand up in its own right. There's a balancing act between the density of textures, a sense of stories moving forward and musical interludes to be achieved.

There is also an inherent awkwardness as pre-recorded and live sound inhabit very different worlds. However, if the fusion between the mediums works it allows the resonance of found narrative to shine through; the unique quality of heartfelt and unorchestrated speech made translucent through the music.

Downstream was later revised and presented in its new form at the Wimborne Festival in 2000.