TREVOR WISHART: The Garden of Earthly Delights / INTONAL 2025

17:00 TREVOR WISHART: Artist Talk Read more about the talk here!
21:30 TREVOR WISHART: The Garden of Earthly Delights 

The Garden of Earthly Delights

... a comic opera ...

Trevor Wishart (2019)

Inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s famous painting of the same name, The Garden of Earthly Delights is a work that Trevor Wishart describes as a “comic opera.” Conceived as an eight-channel audio piece, the work immerses voices in various sonic environments, where both the spoken words and their surrounding contexts continuously transform each time they return.

Extremely dense in texture, the piece uses the voices of its characters as raw material for intricate digital manipulation. Composed over four years, The Garden of Earthly Delights reimagines Bosch’s world for the 21st century and for the medium of sound. Instead of Bosch’s simultaneous pictorial depiction, Wishart’s Garden presents the experience of a wanderer lost in a maze—stumbling upon different situations, revisiting them, only to find that they have changed in her absence.

This work represents a recent milestone in Wishart’s long-term exploration of the musical possibilities of human speech through metamorphic processes. It explicitly engages with narrative: as Wishart states in his Official Guide, each of the seven narrative threads evolves each time it resurfaces. His introduction to the piece promises to guide the listener through the labyrinth, but with a cautionary note: “Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee to find the exit.”

Trevor Wishart (b 1946). Composer/performer from the North of England specialising in sound metamorphosis and constructing the software to make it possible (Sound Loom/CDP). He has lived and worked as composer-in-residence in Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Mexico and the USA. He creates music with his own voice, for professional groups, or in imaginary worlds conjured up in the studio. His recent work “The Garden of Earthly Delights” (2021) is a darkly comic take on the human situation using the voices of actors, singers and politicians.

He is also the principal developer of music processing software for the Composer’s Desktop Project. His aesthetic and technical ideas are described in the books On Sonic Art, Audible Design and Sound Composition. In 2008 he was awarded the international Giga-Herz Grand prize for his life’s work, and in 2018 the British Association of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA) Award for Innovation. 

Visit Trevor Wishart’s artist page – trevorwishart.co.uk

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