[02] Miroslav Srnka: We are giving birth!

Composers have been inspired many times by the breath and pulse - the ubiquitous but short physiological gestures - of the human body. One particular physiological process, whose sound and, above all, "rhythmic" quality can stretch from several minutes to several hours, is extremely precious: birth.

It is amazing how its auditory form, a kind of mass rhythm, corresponds to the laws of a well constructed musical shape - an almost perfect "contracting" form (in fact, precisely in the manner defined by French spectral music). This somewhat cynical idea occurred to me much later, when I was present at the birth of my son.

I decided, then, to shape the act of birth through sound. However, not in order to create a sound object corresponding to some unusual physiological form, but so that, through it, everyone could call to mind an event which itself has an unusual force within it. Its participants, once again, for a few minutes of their routine lives, learn to perceive a shout, nakedness, blood or crying with a sense of awe.

This recording was made possible through the exceptional willingness and compliance of an anonymous family and the obstetrics team headed by Dr Hulvert from the Institute for the Care of Mother and Child in Podolí in Prague.

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Miroslav Srnka (*1975)
composer, musicologist, www.srnka.cz