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| World's strangest orchestra - a foghorn, brass bands and 50 ships | World's strangest orchestra - a foghorn, brass bands and 50 ships |
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| A requiem has been written to mark the passing from use of the UK's remaining land-based foghorns, which for the last 150 years have warned shipping about dangerous shorelines and other hazards during foggy conditions. An armada of boats will be taking part in the performance, with their ships' horns joining three brass bands on shore, plus the star of the event - the foghorn at Souter Lighthouse. | A requiem has been written to mark the passing from use of the UK's remaining land-based foghorns, which for the last 150 years have warned shipping about dangerous shorelines and other hazards during foggy conditions. An armada of boats will be taking part in the performance, with their ships' horns joining three brass bands on shore, plus the star of the event - the foghorn at Souter Lighthouse. |
| Artists Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway have teamed up with composer Orlando Gough to create The Foghorn Requiem, which will be given a single live performance on the North Sea coast on June 22 as part of the Festival of The North East. | Artists Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway have teamed up with composer Orlando Gough to create The Foghorn Requiem, which will be given a single live performance on the North Sea coast on June 22 as part of the Festival of The North East. |
| Lise Autogena comments: | Lise Autogena comments: |
| Very soon the last of the lighthouse foghorns around the UK will have been decommissioned and their familiar call will become just a memory. But a distant foghorn has always had something of the quality of memory; its softly melancholic sound has always seemed to have come to us from somewhere lost. The Foghorn Requiem will be a final farewell to a sound, and to the people and way of life it represents. | Very soon the last of the lighthouse foghorns around the UK will have been decommissioned and their familiar call will become just a memory. But a distant foghorn has always had something of the quality of memory; its softly melancholic sound has always seemed to have come to us from somewhere lost. The Foghorn Requiem will be a final farewell to a sound, and to the people and way of life it represents. |
| Our idea is to create a piece of music that incorporates space and landscape directly into the composition. | Our idea is to create a piece of music that incorporates space and landscape directly into the composition. |
| Foghorns have been used since the 19th century to warn shipping of danger - from 1855 an Admiralty committee recommended that all ships at sea should have a fog horn or steam whistle for use in foggy conditions. The great machines have recently been superseded by GPS and other technologies, and Souter Lighthouse, near South Shields on Tyneside, has one of the few remaining working horns in the UK. | Foghorns have been used since the 19th century to warn shipping of danger - from 1855 an Admiralty committee recommended that all ships at sea should have a fog horn or steam whistle for use in foggy conditions. The great machines have recently been superseded by GPS and other technologies, and Souter Lighthouse, near South Shields on Tyneside, has one of the few remaining working horns in the UK. |
| Built in 1871, Souter was the first lighthouse in the world lit by electric light. Grace Darling's nephew Robert was the lighthouse keeper for 24 years. In foggy conditions its horn was sounded for four second blasts which were audible for 10 miles or more out to sea. The noise was so loud that the lighthouse staff got an extra 2d an hour "noise money" in their pay. It is now owned by the National Trust who will continue to boom and blast occasionally but for visitors rather than anxious ships. | Built in 1871, Souter was the first lighthouse in the world lit by electric light. Grace Darling's nephew Robert was the lighthouse keeper for 24 years. In foggy conditions its horn was sounded for four second blasts which were audible for 10 miles or more out to sea. The noise was so loud that the lighthouse staff got an extra 2d an hour "noise money" in their pay. It is now owned by the National Trust who will continue to boom and blast occasionally but for visitors rather than anxious ships. |
| The audience's experience of the work will depend on where on the shore they stand, and on weather conditions on the day. A series of small computers equipped with GPS will control the horns of some of the boats, compensating for the time delay in sound traveling from up to several miles away, so that the music coming from out to sea will be heard in harmony with the sound created on land. Composer Orlando Gough said: | The audience's experience of the work will depend on where on the shore they stand, and on weather conditions on the day. A series of small computers equipped with GPS will control the horns of some of the boats, compensating for the time delay in sound traveling from up to several miles away, so that the music coming from out to sea will be heard in harmony with the sound created on land. Composer Orlando Gough said: |
| The tones of Souter's fog horn are almost a minor third, and can be heard from miles away. An amazing amount of engineering has gone into making a sound that loud. There will be an antiphonal relationship between the "choir" of ships' horns out to sea and the "orchestra" of the brass bands and the Souter foghorn on the coast. Exactly what you hear will depend on where you stand on the coastline | The tones of Souter's fog horn are almost a minor third, and can be heard from miles away. An amazing amount of engineering has gone into making a sound that loud. There will be an antiphonal relationship between the "choir" of ships' horns out to sea and the "orchestra" of the brass bands and the Souter foghorn on the coast. Exactly what you hear will depend on where you stand on the coastline |
| Owners of boats interested in taking part in this unique celebration of a vanishing aspect of sea-faring culture should contact the project managers at www.foghornrequiem.org | Owners of boats interested in taking part in this unique celebration of a vanishing aspect of sea-faring culture should contact the project managers at www.foghornrequiem.org |
| Here's a visualisation of the floating orchestra of ships' horns off Souter by the artists Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway. Just the brass bands to come. | Here's a visualisation of the floating orchestra of ships' horns off Souter by the artists Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway. Just the brass bands to come. |
| Alan Sykes is the Guardian Northerner's roving arts specialist and a sheep farmer in the high Pennines. He Tweets here. | Alan Sykes is the Guardian Northerner's roving arts specialist and a sheep farmer in the high Pennines. He Tweets here. |
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