Structural Cohesion concerns the function of rhetoric across diverse forms of human activity, from impassioned speech to operatic drama. It was originally designed as a site-specific piece for performance in the public spaces of Concertgebouw Brugge, Belgium.
The first performance in November 2019 featured two principal vocalists, Maribeth Diggle and Natasha Lohan; a choir of vocal students from the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp; and pianist-vocalist, Nicholas Brown. Electroacoustic, vocal and choral micro-performances were spatially distributed across three floors of the building, from the lobby to the upper floors.
The work’s text draws from Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783) by the eighteenth-century rhetorician, Hugh Blair, which cautions against uninformed rhetoric:
The first care of all such as wish either to write with reputation, or to speak in public so as to command attention, must be, to extend their knowledge.
Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 1783.
Much of the musical material is derived from a computer analysis of this line of text being spoken. This constitutes the basis of the ‘Rhetorical Song’, which was presented in the building’s lobby in tandem with simultaneous vocal activity on the first floor.
The choral performance made its way through the building’s informal spaces—a transition between the solo Rhetorical Song, performed on the ground floor, and the ‘game-song’ vocal duet performed on the first floor.
