268 years of reverb NNF 2024

I am glad that I spent eight hours of my Saturday sitting in the Octagon Chapel while two musicians (James McVinnie and Eliza McCarthy) took turns to maintain a bizarrely engaging continuous drone on the pipe organ. This was the world premiere of Jonny Greenwood’s (Radiohead, The Smile) composition and, as far as I was concerned, by far the most intriguing event of this year’s Norfolk and Norwich Festival.

by Tom Lincoln · Photo: the N&N festival 19 May 2024

I arrived at 2pm, as the piece began, unsure how long I would last before either taking a substantial break or bailing out altogether. As it was, I needn’t have worried. I sat there for the next eight hours, only taking two short breaks during the entire performance. At times I was transfixed by the incrementally changing sound, at other times I was almost unaware of it. There was something completely mesmerising about the experience that at times seemed only partially connected to the music itself. It’s a beautiful building whose large windows meant that, over the course of the afternoon and evening, the gradually changing light seemed as significant to the performance as the equally gradual increase in volume. The name of the piece derives from the age of the chapel, built 268 years ago.

The audience were seated in the round, both on the ground floor and in the chapel’s balcony. Tickets were available either for the entire performance or for 1 hour 50 minute slots throughout the afternoon and evening. As a result, audience numbers fluctuated significantly.

There can’t have been more than a handful of us who were present for the entire performance. The beginning and end of the concert were the most well attended. There was a fallow period in the early evening when numbers may have been as low as ten. I looked down from the balcony at one point to see five people, four of whom were on their phones. But that was unusual. For most of the concert numbers were much higher, and most people generally appeared to be absorbed by the sound, as I was.

I made some notes during the performance and will reproduce some of them here, in an attempt to convey the effect this strange noise had on me:

‘It is three o’clock. I arrived an hour ago…I heard the first notes sound from outside the entrance. Slow droning notes have been sounding since then, overlaying and running into each other at times but, more often than not, running on unchanged while the experience of listening to them becomes sparser and spaces in the noise appear to open up.’

‘There is a surprising amount of photography taking place, given that the audience is, on the whole, entirely stationary and any movements made by the organist are barely perceptible. Occasionally a new note will sound which appears to shift the dynamic in the room entirely. The acoustics mean that the sustained drones can be accompanied, for extended periods, by their echoes, echoes which take on a character of their own.’

‘It’s 4.42. Not sure if it’s the music or my brain, but the last twenty minutes or so have been particularly engaging. Difficult to tell if the added depth to the sound – what appear to be fragments of melodies beneath the drone – are in fact additional notes being played, or are simply a product of the manner in which the various layers of sound and echo are bleeding into each other.’

‘8.30ish. Both upstairs and downstairs are as full as they’ve been all afternoon/evening. It’s starting to get dark and I’m starting to feel cold, having not thought to bring a jacket. The sound now seems fuller and more discordant at times. What was a hum is now a swell. Some of the audience who arrived just before eight have decided to leave…The fading light makes it difficult to know for sure but it looks like JG [Jonny Greenwood – who was present for much of the performance] is back…The sound now seems huge. The drone is shadowed by a high-pitched ringing, bouncing off the walls behind me…I’ve grown accustomed to the drone and the ringing echo of the drone. I’m concerned that the relative silence of the rest of my life is going to be challenging for a while…There is still a bit of light coming through the windows. I look up and see a band of grey-blue and then a band of pink-orange and then another band of grey-blue. Like the drone becoming the ringing echo of the drone becoming the swell that the drone was before it layered itself on top of itself…[etc. etc.]’