Devil’s Glen
soundscape composition for tape20178’ 12”
The Devil’s Glen (Co. Wicklow, Ireland), is a gorge cut through Early Cambrian bedrock by glacial meltwater at the end of the last Ice Age. The Vartry River flows through it now, from a waterfall at its head.
Of the many folk tales surrounding it, there is one which describes a demon carving out the glen in a fit of rage. The name may also have come from the sound of the river echoing through the valley, said to sound like a "satanic power announcing some great doom" (no source!).
The lower Vartry Reservoir was built upriver from the glen in 1863, and the upper reservoir in 1923, so the river has been weakened twice since the sound was at its greatest. It’s still loud, but not quite satanic anymore. In a bid to reintroduce this feeling, I used my first idea; the tritone, “diabolus in musica”, and as the glen was carved from the bedrock I carved the tritone from the white noise of the waterfall, removing frequencies surrounding it so that I could be heard amongst the rest.
Pictures:
1. Devil’s Glen Waterfall
2. A spectrogram of the piece, showing the tritone carved from the waterfall’s white noise
3. Top half of “Head of The Devil’s Glen” (1842) by W. H. Bartlett, engraved By J. T. Willmore
4. Bottom half
5. Photograph of the waterfall from 1875