Nearly a hundred years ago, French composer Erik Satie created a work titled ‘Musique d’ameublement’, a piece to be performed between acts of a play during conversation. It was intended to provide an atmosphere, not to be carefully listened to as a performance. It was perhaps the first ‘background’ music.
Pergola Music is a re-interpretation of this piece. Multiple speakers mounted at different points on the Olympic Park pergola structure will playback a subtle composition amongst the visitors. The sounds, loosely based on Satie’s original score, were made from field recordings from Calgary. Composed in a modular fashion, with many small units that were assembled and reassembled over the months of the festival to create a shifting, changing, composition.
© 2019 Douglas Moffat