Covid-19 death toll strikes a chord

When sound artist Daniel Beban, left, reflects on this year’s lockdown, he thinks of the daily death toll.

In the 300-odd days since the start of the pandemic, there have been 1.4 million deaths worldwide, with the United States, Brazil and India the worst-affected countries.

Wellington-based Beban says he had an urge to turn something monotonous and negative into something musical.

Sowas born Daily Deaths, a new work that allows audiences to experience the unfolding days, weeks and months of the Covid-19 pandemic in sound.

The piece directly translates statistics from different countries into amusical score performed by 18 musicians. The various nations’ death rates are translated into musical notes – the higher the rate, the higher the pitch of the note.

Trumpets represent Iran, double basses China, flutes Brazil, cellos India and so on. The piece is continually evolving because the pandemic is ongoing.

‘‘Part of the concept is to actually hear through the rising and falling of notes the unfolding days and weeks and months of the pandemic. It was about experiencing that condensed version of 2020 ... from the beginning, slowly pacing through to the end,’’ Beban says.

The 18 musicians are divided into nine pairs of instruments, with the music based around the breath of each musician.

Each note is one full breath, and about 300 breaths represent the approximate number of days since the start of the pandemic. As there are constant long notes, the piece is physically difficult to perform.

‘‘In this way, the music mirrors the respiratory nature of the virus,’’ he says.

The hour-long piece is due to be performed at the Futuna Chapel in Karori, Wellington.

It has been organised by Beban via his involvement with Wellington’s Pyramid Club, an artist-run space for sonic arts and experimental music, which is based on Taranaki St.

Greg O’Brien, a poet on the chapel committee, says the building itself is fitting for the performance, being a piece of radical avantgarde architecture, which a lot of conservative Catholics originally did not take to.

‘‘It’s a very reflective space, a spiritual space. Itwas originally signed off as a Catholic chapel ... [there’s] all sorts of layers of significance with it being a religious and spiritual space.

‘‘More and more, it’s becoming a cultural space ... That’s art,’’ he says.

As the music represented deaths of people, itwas even more fitting the piece would be performed there, in what he likened to a Requiem Mass (Mass for the dead).

‘‘Music being theway the spirit is uplifted from this material life to the next [is] very beautiful I think.’’

Religious music has always been about the ideas of death, life, damnation and redemption, O’Brien says. ‘‘It’ll be very spare, very solemn, prayerful, meditative ... for all its preoccupation with Covid and people leaving the planet, it’s very much about the sustaining force of life – the breath.’’

Daily Deaths, Futuna Chapel, December 5, 2pm, koha entry.