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Ruth Crawford Seeger: Three Chants for Women's Chorus

Enter Sound Within Sound festival to the eerie sounds of Ruth Crawford Seeger’s chorus of discordant but captivating chants for female voices.

Written in Berlin by a young Ruth Crawford, these haunting chants combine her own nonsense words – simply because she couldn’t find a decent translation of the Sanskrit in Berlin – with discordant voices, and surprisingly, Chinese vocal techniques.

While Kate Molleson describes the middle movement, titled ‘To an Angel’, as ‘gliding about like slow skaters on an astral ice rink’, the outer movements, ‘To an Unkind God’ and ‘To a Kind God’, convey the mystical and majestic content of the Hindu scripture Crawford intended to put to music with these chants.

Performers

The Marian Consort

Repertoire

Crawford Seeger: 3 Chants for women's chorus

For your visit

This event is held at the Queen Elizabeth Hall Southbank Centre

The Queen Elizabeth Hall is open from 90 minutes before events start until they finish. It’s closed at all other times.