year:

2019

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instrumentation:

orchestra and magnetic tape

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duration:

17'30" ca.

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first performance:

Acedemy of Music, Krakow​

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Orchestra Corda Cracovia​

Patrycja Pieczara (cond.)

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note:

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Little Ice Age, Purcell, Foley, old tapes, stories​

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That time is now called the Little Ice Age. It has not happened only once. It came out of nowhere as if the Sun just wouldn’t deign. It shined less, it covered with spots and it cooled off.

Who knows how it was elsewhere, as perhaps no one has drifted into the chronicles of Siberian tribes or the Innuit memories. Albeit in Europe this cold is being remembered as exceptional.

Reputedly, in the year 1323, from St. Andrew’s Day until the Rose Sunday, the frost was so huge, that the merchants with the carts full of goods were crossing the ice from Norway to Sweden and aback. Apparently, between Denmark, the Slavic Country, and Jutland, the Baltic Sea was so frozen, that reavers incoming from the Slavic Country were rifling some Danish environs.

In the middle of the sea, on the ice, taverns were set up for the visitors. During the Thirty Years’ War, no vessels were crossing the Baltic Sea, but only infantries. Travellers were driving, carts filled with grain were dragged. Skis’ were grinding, ice floe cracking, panels of ice rubbing, freeze water splashing. Slippery...cold...Light...! Ah yes! This is a window of inn standing on the frozen sheet. Today, they will drink, eat, and sleep on the ice!

And then a cold sea mist is rising. It is getting colder. A glacial landscape is dissolving, becoming a distant memory, disappearing under the surface. It is more and more like a dream... like a complete unlikeness.

— Małgorzata Litwinowicz-Droździel