Crossing Bergen

Crossing Bergen was created as a kind of maquette, or sketch for my piece Three Cities (2011), which formed part of the Three Cities Project, undertaken by composer / researchers from the University of Aberdeen — Suk-Jun Kim, Ross Whyte, and me. The project examined the relationship between recorded sound and its location, with particular reference to how composers, who use recorded media as their compositional material, relate to sounds by others.

One sound, recorded by Ross Whyte, attracted my attention. It was the sound of the tiny 9-seater Beffen passenger ferry, which regularly crosses the Bergen harbour (Norway).

I decided only to listen to the sound and not to look at any images of the ferry so that this would not direct my approach to working with the sound. On listening deeply I started to appreciate the musical potential of the sound — the gradual crescendo of the chug; its timbral variation, particularly as the boat seems to move away after the climax with the reflections of the sound from what I imagine to be various large structures and surfaces (perhaps buildings); a sense of space, and the movement of the sounds within that space.

Only after composing the piece did I look at an image of the ferry and make comparisons with how I’d imagined it looked. Of course, it didn’t look anything like I’d imagined, but because I hadn’t been there, I found it easy to “reduce” my listening even more than if I had actually seen it.

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