from Absorber by Laurence Osborn, composer 

When writing ‘Gordon Hospital 101018’ I wanted to write music that sounded like the look of hospital walls. Visits to hospital usually involve a lot of waiting, and an inability (either from distress or a lack of alternative options) to do anything other than focus on one’s surroundings. Because of this, I suspect many of us have, at some point or other, spent a lot of time looking at hospital walls. In my experience, hospital walls have a distinct palette (off white with pale greens and soft purples), and visual language (benign cartoon humans rendered on graphics software, warnings presented in understated boxy text, and palliative murals depicting forest scenes in muted colours). The overall impression is an unfamiliar mixture of functionality and soothingness that you can’t find anywhere else. 

In my mind, hospital walls are also always viewed through a lens of agitation or distress of some kind. This is because I can’t conjure up recollections of hospital walls without remembering the physical or emotional wretchedness I felt while looking at them. Memories of hospital walls therefore always contain a sort of sensory dissonance, in which the intensity of my discomfort and anxiety clashes with the serenity of my surroundings. This combination is what I was going for with the music of ‘Gordon Hospital 101018’. The music itself is calm – indifferent, almost – and the form is static (a passacaglia in seven variations). But underneath, the material bristles uncomfortably: the repetition of the form is undermined by the register and dynamic, which shift constantly. As the piece progresses, the melodic line becomes nervous, fidgeting in sporadic arpeggiated figures. The piece concludes with a final statement of the bassline, in straight minims. Anxiety gives way to an uneasy tranquility, as the piece’s gaze turns back to the hospital wall. 

NEXT PAGE: CURTAINS by the Hospital Senses Collective, or back to THRESHOLDS full booklet.