Titanic’s Lament
February 26, 2009
Self-portrait by Sam Taylor Wood.
Gavin Bryars – Titanic Hymn (Autumn) All Strings
“Bryars wrote the piece to mirror the last moments of the doomed voyage, when the Titanic sunk and famously the band played on. According to survivors the music being played was a rendition of ‘Autumn’, an Episcopal hymn which forms the basis of Bryars’ composition. The notes and phrases from the hymn are worked in and out of the piece, sinking through the waters, effected by time, nostalgia and the cavernous reverberations of the ship itself with each scrape and hiss worked into Bryars’ incredible vision”. [Boomkat, on 'The Sinking of the Titanic' / 1995]
