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Opera of the Eighteenth Hour

by Nick Sudnick

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Damián Formoso
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kjosef
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Rudy Carrera
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Norvern Munky
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Rune Kjær Rasmussen
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1.
Part 1 13:54
lyrics
….хорузлитнолунитные дети богов, пришедших из глубины струнноспиральной бездны неба, саморождающиеся и саморазвивающиеся, всесильные полутелесные и полупрозрачные, но утерявшие внутреннюю силу взаимосвязи с высшим.. .... steelingotlustress children of the gods, they came out of the depths of the stringspiral abyss of the sky, self-birthing and self-growing up, all-powerfull, half-corporal and half-transparent, but they all lost the inner power of the interdependence with the lofty heights...
2.
Part 2 10:09
lyrics
...пение фиореневых и красерных богов, порождающее внутрезвучащий язык семисефиротной геомантиметрии, в которой кронотопное измерение между звездами опоясывается лазурномерцальнолентной дугой радуг... ... the singing of the violetfie and beaublooming gods, begetting the insidesounding language of the sevensephirothic geomantrimetry, in which the crownotopic dimension between the stars is encircled by the azuretwinkletaped arch of rainbows...
3.
Part 3 09:06
lyrics
..музыка богов, творящая из золотопаутинной пыли звезд бесконечно изменяющиеся, перетекающие из формы в форму.. вертикальнопармиднотеомантрические и горизонтальноантропомерные...человекообразные растительные часы, взрывающие любые наклонения жидкого времени...,огненные звучащие скульптуры из парящих сфер воды... .... the music of gods, it takes the spiderwebgolden dust of the stars to create the infinitely changing, flowing out of a form into another form...the verticalparafallowtheomantric and horizontalthropomesuared...anthropoid vegetable clock, which blows up the slopes of the liquid time...,the vibrating fiery sculptures made of the hovering spheres of water...
4.
Part 4 08:02
lyrics
...красерные боги, побежденные пением фиореневых богов, в танце жалобы и гнева с белыми змеями холода, пронзают чернолучным копьем красное солнце с синим сиянием...пронзают черное солнце в зеленом..белое солнце...волны белого мрака удочерившей нас планеты... ... the beaublooming gods, vanquished by the violetfie gods, in their dance of grievance and wrath with the white serpents of cold, pierce the red sun in its blue radiance with their blackrayed spear... pierce the black sun in green... the white sun... the waves of the white gloom of the planet which adopted us...
5.
Part 5 08:24
lyrics
… преснодышащее в океане небо латает зеленовато-сонные пробоины в изжелто-съевшей его перламутровой глубине иззубрено-взлёдными лоскутами мелководий — так покинутая противотечениями раковина заменяет собою фиолентнолактающие паруса новорожденного горизонта.. ... breathingvapideternally in the ocean, the sky patches up the greenish-drowsy shot-holes in the tinged with yellow, having eaten up the ocean, patches up the pearl depth with the chisel-runicedway shreds of the shoal - in the same manner, the shell, left behind by its againststreams, replaces by itself the lappingtapedfie sails of the new horizon...
6.
Part 6 10:30
lyrics
...земля, сразу удочерившая нас, по воле фиореневых и красерных богов покинувших родные звезды, порождающие непредсказуемости радуг друг друга — подружи воздух и воду! .... earth, then, in accordance with the violetfie and beaublooming gods' will, you adopted us who left their native stars, the stars begetting the unpredictions of the one another's rainbows - make air and water friends!

about

In memory of Willy R. Melnikov (1962–2016)

sound objects, composition Nick Sudnick
libretto Willy R. Melnikov
lead vocal Vera Ogareva
trumpet Vyacheslav Gaivoronsky
violin Antonina Pozdnyakova
cello Natalia Nazarova
translated from the Russian by Emilia Loseva, edited by Simon Hollingsworth
design Ksenija Astafjeva

credits

released November 23, 2017

Willy R. Melnikov

FRAGMENT OF A BRIEF HISTORY OF KERGUELEN


The archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean, located far from the equator (at 49 degrees S.) and nowadays known as Kerguelen, was discovered by a crew of the French Captain Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Themarec on 12 February, 1772. His name was given to the largest piece of the three hundred shreds of the land which make up this scattering.
At the time of their discovery, the French found the islands altogether uninhabited.
In December 1940, the sailors of the German cruiser "Atlantis" were digging a grave for a ship engineer, who died in an accident, and unearthed the fragments of pictographic writing. The site is still called "The Southernest Burial Place of the German Soldier". But the major bulk of the moulded texts on the plates of the alloy of obscure origin was discovered when the nuclear supplies were tested in 1970s.
For years, the French military kept their finds secret, but the truth about the ancient civilization Wadllkyeittshauuchyrr is starting to reveal itself to become the common planetary property, owing to the Russian hackers who have broken through the secret servers of the French Special Branch. "Kyeira-Guialli-Wuellchyannee" - this is how the name of the last outpost of the Kyeiruug people was pronounced.
The Kyeiruugs were the aboriginal people of the continent of Antarctica, the nearest land neighbouring to Kerguelen (about 2000 km). The formation of the glacial shell on this continent was the result of the failure of their technologies. The Kyeiruugs were over-diligent in attempting to join their religion with science. While experimenting with the extension of lifespan, they were begging the gods to give them the gift of the wise equanimity, the ability to strengthen the instinct of self-preservation and also "the skills to swim with the lightness of the birds flying".
The gods are, beyond doubt, omnipotent, but they themselves tend to get bogged down in their own private "omnipotencies" when they conceive too literally what the human beings appeal for. That is why the first burst of salvoes of the god-will-emanators initiated the irreversible mainland freeze (the cryogenic "preservation of wisdom"), and the second burst provoked the Kyeitts starting to transmute into penguins. Meanwhile, the name of this species of bird comes from the Kyeiruugian "eypeewangy-vyeingaruu" - "make air and water friends". The consequences of the massive technological errors of the Kyeiruugs adversely affect the world of today, including the inexplicable tragic accidents which happen regularly with the Soviet and New Zealand aircraft etc.
Those of the Kyeiruugs who managed to escape the irradiation left the freezing continent by separate groups: some of them reached the Persian Gulf to be, marking the beginning of the Eyakhayakh civilization (which was to become a guide for the Sumerians); the others fled along the neck of the land which then connected the Antarctic peninsula and Tierra el Fuego, where nowadays the Drake Passage is located. These days, it is here, in Patagonia (the south of Argentina) where the last Kyeiruug descendants - who go under the name of Yamaanas - are surviving, and they speak their isolated language, Alakaluuf. They are the last guardians of the "errdooayg-seayyamfanga", the pictographic Kyeiruug writing which resembles, in a way, a map of the grottoes and, at the same time, the notation in music.
It is worthy of a mention that when giving a glance at the archipelago from above, out of space, it looks like half a head of a tack which nailed the Indian Ocean to the Antarctic underwater shelf, and half a butterfly of Sphingidae family with the head of a fossilized trilobite spreading its wings. This could have shaped the terrestrial totemism of the Kyeiruugs which was developing on the basis of the worshipping the insects divided into two classes: the harmfull and the usefull. The echoes of the cult lived to the Kerguelen times, and the striking demonstration of this fact could be the "Kerguelen cabbage" that grew on the archpelago. This plant, Prhnglea anticatascorbtica, with the leaves forming a gigantic rosette, saved several Kyeiruug generations - and later on, also the sailors in great distress - from famine. It may well be that for this reason their national ornaments and inscriptions had the attributes of the insect-vegetable configuration...
The representatives of Wadllkyttshauuchyrr asserted that they were the children of the rivalling clans of the gods, who were forced to leave their native planet because the gods had failed to come to understanding.
Having found themselves on Earth, the Kyeiruugs set to render the welcoming continent - the Antarctic region of time to come - habitable. The name they gave to it then was "Nchyeirroayuukmazhsae" - "The Land That Adopted Us Right Away". The point is that the first of the colonists leaving with care the spacecraft and setting foot on Earth was the woman. This is why all the parts in Kyeiruugian theatre were played by women - they were reputed to be the immediate successors of the primary steps made on this planet which had greeted them happily...
All the vocal parts originated in the Kyeiruugian priestly hymns which interlaced the legends of the journey to Earth, the epos of the exploration of the Antarctic region and the history of the life-saving from the gods' misunderstanding. The translations made from Wadlli to the majority of modern terrestrial languages exceed the total volume of the original, owing to the unprecedented capacity of the primary language.

(July 2009, Moscow, Nickolo-Allgarble Suburb)

We have only one fragment of the Kyeiruugian mysteries' "score" at our disposal. V. Gaivoronsky defined the structure of their tonal system as vertical, containing six symbols, which has no analogues in other traditions.
The drawings which are accessible to us make it reasonable to assume that for the musical accompaniment the Kyeiruugs used pipes of various pitches, a great number of percussion instruments, gongs of different sizes, very peculiar stringed instruments which resembled the harp. Metal was the main material used in constructing these musical instruments.
The piece of music that we present here is not the direct reconstruction of the Kyeiruugian mysteries, it is just one of the potential sounding versions of the music of this unique civilization.
Willy Melnikov managed to decode the phonology and to interpret the meaning of the following six extracts of the Kyeiruugian mysteries, and we are happy to introduce this work to you.
Nick Sudnick

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ZGA Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation

The experimental Russian band ZGA was founded in 1984. The leader of the band Nick Sudnick explores the limits of sound using the elements of noise, industrial, avant-rock, traditional and classical music. He developed the unique sound objects called zgamoniums. His latest visionary project "24 Rush Hours" represents a series of operas and this massive piece of work is still in progress. ... more

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