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Soundtrack for radio play by city musician is glass act...
Paul Jeeves A BIZARRE ailment dating from the Middle Ages, in which sufferers believe they are turning into glass, has provided the inspiration for an intriguing work by a York musician.
Dr Neil Sorrell's 15-minute piece of music has been created using only the sounds of glass. It will be broadcast as a soundtrack to a play on Radio 4 next week.
The senior lecturer at York University's department of music was asked to create the piece for the radio play by his brother, Martin, who had written about "glass delusion", a state of profound anxiety now associated with severe depression. It was relatively common in the Middle Ages.
King Charles VI of France was a sufferer and had iron ribs sewn into his clothing to protect himself in case of a fall, while in 1610 Miguel de Cervantes wrote a novella, The Glass Graduate, about the condition.
But Martin Sorrell, who is a professor of French at Exeter University, has set his play The Glass Man, chronicling a young man's affliction with the condition, in the present day.
He approached his brother to write the music and Neil Sorrell took up the challenge, though a limited budget and a tight deadline meant he decided on a novel approach.
Mr Sorrell said: "I didn't want to use normal instruments. I decided that using the sounds that could be created by glass would give the music an other-worldly quality.
"If it had been done on normal instruments, it would have sounded banal and nave."
After sketching out his musical ideas, he set about gathering his instruments including wine glasses, large vessels from York University's department of chemistry and even the inside of a vacuum flask.
He enlisted the help of Chilean Felipe Otondo, a second-year postgraduate student in the department of music, to act as recording engineer.
He added: "I started producing sounds using the glass and recorded them with Felipe which gave me a scale of notes.
"It was very satisfying and very creative, but a bit of white-knuckle ride towards the end when the deadline was fast approaching."
It took 24 hours of studio time to produce 15 minutes of music.
The Glass Man, directed by Sara Davies, will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 2.15pm next Tuesday.
paul.jeeves@ypn.co.uk
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