BLEAK from ICELOCK CONTINUUM by Constance Cooper

Constance Cooper: BLEAK
winter fragments from Charles Dickens’s BLEAK HOUSE
for solo voice and electronics 11’45”
vocals by the composer

(The abiding interest of the cold-weather images in this novel is the inclusion of their supposed opposites: heat—smoke—fire.)

1) [Narrator] . . . issuing like visible smoke f rom his mouth as if he were on fire within . . .

2) [Esther] It was one of those colorless days when everything looks heavy and harsh.
The houses frowned on us, the dust rose at us, the smoke swooped at us,
nothing made any compromise about itself or wore a softened aspect. I
thought there were more funerals passing along the dismal pavements
than I had ever seen before.

3) [Narrator] Daylight comes; morning comes; noon comes.

4) [Narrator] . . . in the daytime, the candles burning with a white flame . . .

5) [Jo and Captain Hawdon] One cold winter night when the boy was shivering. . .
the man turned and came back, and gave him the price of a supper and a night’s
lodging.The man had often spoken to him since and asked him whether he slept
well at night, and how he bore hunger and cold, and whether he ever wished to die,
and similar strange questions.

6) [Miss Flite] I have felt the cold here. I have felt something sharper than cold.

7) [About Lady Dedlock] She veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels
and her money, listens, goes downstairs at a moment when the hall is empty,
opens and shuts the great door, flutters away in the shrill frosty wind.

8) [About Tulkinghorn] He sleeps in his turret with a complaining flagstaff over his head.

9) [Narrator] Upon this wintry night it is so still that listening to the intense silence is like looking at the intense darkness.

10) [Narrator] The fire glows brightly on the paneled wood and palely on the
window glass, where through the cold reflection of the blaze the colder landscape shudders in the wind and a grey mist creeps along, the only traveler besides
the waste clouds.

11) [Narrator] The frosty night wears away, and the dawn breaks, and the post-chaise
comes rolling in through the grey mist like the ghost of a chaise departed. It has
plenty of spectral company; many ghosts of trees and hedges, slowly vanishing. . .

12) [Esther] . . . the wind . .. wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life.

Composer’s note: I compose acousmatic music, often including my voice, and am a prolific improviser
https://www.youtube.com/@improv400
Last summer took me to Croatia and Slovenia for studio recordings, to be issued in 2026; stay tuned! I will perform and record in both places again next June.

https://camembertelectrique.bandcamp.com/track/wind-sign
https://www.discogs.com/release/35745076-Various-One-World 41-47
https://akimirka.bandcamp.com/album/silence-more-silence-louder

Constance Cooper (US):
https://camembertelectrique.bandcamp.com/track/lay-out
https://soundcloud.com/aptimprov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIjME0rCyxA&list=PLPTHoQNmO_Q1fmypO6SzoKZdgTL2kC7Si&ab_channel=PitKinzer

Independent label

electronic / experimental music

Underground sounds and sonic adventures from Earth and beyond

camembertelectrique.com