A Beautiful Path: Plein Air Composing (prologue) | Kate Moore

In collaboration with Gaudeamus Festival

7 – 16 September 2023

A Beautiful Path is research project about music and landscape, mapping the creative process through plein air composing. The project takes place as the composer Kate Moore walks a straight line-way from the point of origin at Oss in The Netherlands to the point of destination at Skellig Michael in Ireland over a period of 12 months, to create a new composition inspired by ancient epic poetry and ballads, using voice and a lyre to capture the experience. In dialogue with visual artist Isabelle Vigier who joins Kate at significant places along the way they document the process, to create a sound and visual installation, and later, a publication. Follow the A Beautiful Path through her website.

During the Gaudeamus festival composer Kate Moore shared the first de results of her special, two year lasting project with the audience at Movement Exposed Gallery Space. On Thursday 7 September two short live performances were presented at 7.15 and 10 pm. (tickets: Gaudeamus). The documentary installation created by Kate Moore and visual director Isabelle Vigier was on show from Friday 8 until Saturday 16 September.

Photo: Herre Verveer/Gaudeamus

Prologue

The prologue, is an introduction to the project A Beautiful Path and is part one of an ongoing series of installations telling the story of the walking track. It is inspired by Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In the prologue of The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer introduces the characters of each of the pilgrims before the pilgrims go on to tell their personal tales. Here the characters of the origin and destination is introduced through photography, which lays the ground upon which to elaborate the story of the walking track between the two. The characteristics of the two places are vastly different, and by placing them next to each other, their personality, individuality and identity begins to emerge as though taking on human persona, one of which creates a personal relationship with the walker and as a result an evolving dialogue and theatre between walker and landscape.

Documentary installation

Alongside the photographic portraits of origin and destination, lie a series of treasure boxes, signified by mysterious landscapes. What lies under the lid of the boxes awaits discovery and treasures. Like archaeology, these are clues that can be pieced together to reveal a story. As the boxes symbolise what lies hidden in the ground, music emerges like ground water bubbling to the surface, music that connects each hidden landscape, like the blood vessels of a body to which all the places belong, a red thread that links each one. This thread can be seen on a map of the path, where significant places along the route are presented like constellations of starts, an inversion that hints at the connection between earth and the firmament, and the music that lies underfoot lies also in the heavens, emphasised by their placement on a Pythagorean monochord.

Concept, composition & performance: Kate Moore | visual concept & design: Isabelle Vigier

Impression of the presentations of the project