Tonight
This evening we had a program after dinner, a thing Maureen put together. She is a composer, and she specializes in coughatorio, which is like oratorio, only with a kind of learnable tonal coughing instead of singing. I am a soprano, but most people cough in a lower register, so I was with the altos. The key to the kind of coughing style Maureen showed us is to cough from your diaphragm; otherwise your throat gets sore very quickly. I was surprised by how good it sounded once we all got going. The story itself was loosely based on Handel's Belshazzar, but kind of tightened up, because it's hard to convey much story in coughatorio. I'm terribly thirsty now, but I think it would be nice to try again some time. Hopefully more people would participate, because many were coughing along from the audience.
posted by L M at 11:48 PM
6 Comments:
Get some H2O right now, before it's too late...
I don't like to wander the halls at this hour. Should be fine till morning.
S as in Sharpon writes: If the cough is directed through the diaphram it will, eventually, during a long piece, such as the recital work, produce a reflux that can be harmful to the body, in general, and the asophagus and lungs, in particular. As you well remember, Loretta, when I first treated you as a child, I forewarned you about experiments such as this. Your body is to be treated with respect. Exhaustion is not the least of consequences that can befall you - in that place it will likely make you very susceptable to manipulation, something to protect against, at all costs.
Did Maureen write the Ahem Symphony? I am trying to find a CD of that, and I can't for the life of me. Is that something she'd know about?
Ynthia, I asked Maureen. She said,
"I didn't write the Ahem Symphony (aka Rachinskaya's Op. 14 in D major), but three years ago I collaborated with a consortium of Viennese orchestral groups to produce a massive organ with latex pipes that was used to synthesize the Ahem Symphony for an outdoor performance.
"Unfortunately, it was destroyed when the container in which it was being shipped to the U.S. to be used in a performance at Tanglewood was deliberately and savagely left on the deck of a barge by two dockworkers who were fans of Behrmanov (a rival jealous of Rachinskaya). The container overheated in the sun, and the pipes, modeled on human vocal cords, melted.
"I am working with a biomedical engineer I know to construct a new Ahem Organ out of a material used for vascular grafts, which emulate human tissue more closely, and can, of course, withstand higher temperatures. Thanks for asking."
So, there you have it.
I guess my comments don't get approved here anymore, hmmmm? *sad*
Okay I am over it...
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