The Gorgeous Nothings

The Gorgeous Nothings sets seven of Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems – fragments of poetry that she wrote on scraps of envelopes. These little treasures are glimpses into the process of the great American poet. The seven selected poems are book ended by Dickinson’s infamous poem “This is my letter to the World”.

I have been fascinated by Emily Dickinson’s poetry for many years and am drawn to its potent and musical language, imagery, and her careful use of punctuation and capitalization. These elements translate very organically into music and her spellbinding wordsmithery draws you into her innermost mysterious world.

Scored for seven amplified voices and orchestra, this music explores the sonorities of the voices in conjunction with those of the orchestra. Additionally, The Gorgeous Nothings utilizes the Augmented Orchestra (AO) whereby sounds from the orchestra are modified in real time with electronic processing. The AO is a collaboration with sound designer Jody Elff who created custom software to facilitate the live processing. Here are some AO processes that you can listen out for –

Prologue – the vibraphone is pitch shifted down an octave to evoke the sound of bells.
Movement I – reverberation is added to the voices to evoke the acoustic space of a cathedral. Phrases from the voices are also captured and reintroduced later in the movement, and the women’s voices are pitch shifted down an octave to create an unusual sonority.
Movement II – the double basses are pitch shifted down an octave to accentuate a pizzicato figure and to add depth to a pedal tone. High pitches in the piccolo and violin are sustained beyond the original sound source to linger above the orchestra.
Movement III – upper partials/harmonics are added to the upper strings to add a shimmering quality to the sustained pad of sound.
Movement IV – as part of the percussion section, a playing card is attached to the spokes of a bicycle wheel so that when the pedals are spun, a fluttering sound is created. This is randomly spatialized within the speaker array such that the sound appears to move around the orchestra. Gestures in the upper strings are sustained beyond the original gesture with the addition of upper harmonics to create a shimmering effect.
Movement V – clusters created in the vocals are sustained to create richer clusters of sound. Additionally, the vibraphone is pitch shifted down an octave to again evoke the sound of bells and reverberation is added to the voices to evoke the acoustic space of a cathedral.
Movement VI – upper partials are added to the basses to create a swirling drone effect. A long delay is added to expand the cascading gestures in the flutes.
Movement VII – a high drone in the oboes is further extended by an octave and a fifth with heavy reverberation to create an even higher and richer drone. A long delay is added to expand the descending gestures in the flutes and, later, oboes. Basses are pitch shifted down an octave, and violins up an octave, to expand a sustained pad of sounds.
Epilogue – the violins are sustained beyond their sounding notes when they join the upper vocals. The vibraphone is pitch shifted down an octave to evoke the sound of bells. The basses are pitch shifted down an octave to evoke the sound of an organ in the final recitation of the text.

Anna Clyne 2024

Reproduction Rights
This programme note can be reproduced free of charge in concert programmes with a credit to the composer

"Clyne’s orchestral accompaniment is chameleonic: simple, elaborate, powerful, rich, chorale-like, rhythmically insistent, chattering, swirling, pastoral and so on."
Seen and Heard International

"The translucent orchestral textures were judged to perfection, illustrating the varied mood of each of the movements."
Bachtrack