Cities and Memory - remixing the world

"This segment is sort of ambiguous - am I listening to the Lech or to the Danube? Maybe both, or maybe it’s all Danube, and “Lech” is just what we called it before it got there. I worked on that moment, and I looked at what that could mean for the river water, which had come from all these different places, with all these different sounds. 

"One of the included photos is a bird’s eye view of the two rivers, side by side - they really appear independent in that photo. The satellite timelapse is different - first, the orientation and curve of the Lech make it feel like it’s contributing to the Danube, visually. Most strikingly, in the timelapse, color changes in the Lech appear to continue into the mixed river - when the Lech changes color, the water in the Danube which came from the Lech also changes color. This may simply show that the two rivers don’t mix right away, but it got me thinking about perspective, direction, and naming: There is a known end point of the Lech, but the Danube seems to exist before and exist after. 

"When the Lech ends, the Lech water continues, but now named Danube. 
This process is continuing constantly, and the water that meets the Danube could have come from many different places, and gone through many different experiences - those experiences show up in the variety of colors in the timelapse, and in the variety of sounds collected for this project, certainly.

"I thought, I may be able to express these through music theory, through melody. Better than words, anyway. What’s in a name…

"The piece itself is a collection of melodies, recorded on 9 different musical instruments - all the instruments are playing distinct melodies, and every melody leads to the same musical pitch. This is the many waters all leading to/becoming the Danube. 

"The field recording is also played back several times at higher and lower speeds over the course of the piece, sort of a like a slow melody of its own - those also lead to a final note: the recording played back at the original speed. 

"Hearing that last note, the drone, the tonic, I wonder if it’s possible to know all the different ways that an instrument could have gotten there. We see the Danube and call it Danube, but there may be some awareness of how the water got there, too. 

"For those interested:
The music theory behind the scenes here is something I’ve been working on with some friends here in Seattle - the term we are using is “nonatonic harmony” (which translates to “harmony derived from a 9-note scale”). Since I recorded the melodies individually, one by one, and then stitched them all together after, there might be an argument that this is more accurately “polymodal music”, but I’m more excited about this 9-note system, so that’s why I’m considering it in those terms. 

"Here’s some more explanation -
It’s common to refer to musical pitches by letters in the alphabet - A B C D E F G, then wrapping back around to A. That’s seven distinct notes - scales that have one of each letter are considered “heptatonic” (which translates to “seven-tones”). In this piece, I was working with these notes: A Bb B C D E F F# G. That’s nine notes all together, so, “nonatonic”. By the way, since there’s only seven letters in this standard alphabet system, the sharps (#) and flats (b) are added to existing letters in order to make new notes, between the letters. 

"There’s a few available perspectives on this arrangement of notes - one is to see it as 9 totally distinct notes. There are some moments in this piece that feel like that, the moments that are dissonant, because you have two different B notes (B and Bb), or two different F notes (F and F#), and they clash. 

"Another perspective is to play the heptatonic modes which are nested inside the nonatonic scale (this is the polymodal perspective). That original alphabet scale (A B C D E F G) can be played differently to lead to certain notes (“leading to certain notes” is one definition of many for a “mode”). Using those same pitches (A B C D E F G), the melodies that use the notes in such a way to lead to D are called “dorian”, and the melodies that use the notes in such a way to lead to E are called “phrygian”. If we were to use phrygian and dorian melodies, but instead have them all lead to A, we would have to amend the alphabet system a bit, using sharps (#) and flats (b). In the nonatonic scale listed above, we can find an aeolian mode (using the notes A B C D E F G), a dorian mode (using the notes A B C D E F# G), and a phrygian mode (using the notes A Bb C D E F G) - which each lead to A. 

"In practice, this system allowed me to navigate to the final note of each melodic phrase with more options, maybe specifically with two more options (either B and either F). It also introduced more dissonance, which is a characteristic of a lot of music, maybe music in general - I should note that this system isn’t particularly innovative in itself, we’re just putting words to something that happens already in a lot of music. How useful is that? Maybe, if only so that we can talk about it."

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Nicolo Scolieri. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"The inspiration from this piece was firstly at the surface level - flow, time, motion - are all inspiring for musical exploration. As I dug deeper into the material, the concept of rivers as enablers to civilization, to history, added deeper layers to explore - how rivers slowly but inexorably shape ideas, stories, culture and music just the same as they shape land and place.

"I wanted to bring all of these ideas together into some way, while also literally exploring the sound material from the original recording using elements (like sediment) from prior pieces, to construct an evolving and moving piece that suggests a continuity rather than an ending.

"I hope those ideas come across as it builds to its conclusion. No spoilers." 

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Warren Anthony. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"Living in Scotland and spending time in the Scottish Highlands, it is clear to me how integral water and waterways are to the landscape and existence. I sense that humanity has all but forgotten this. There seems to be a belief that we can treat these precious ecosystems in any way we see fit without a care that we may be harming or killing them. When I first heard the recording of the Lech River I was instantly drawn to the serenity of the river and the peaceful lapping of the water. The sounds truly emphasised the beauty and importance of this cherished environment. 

"This recording focusses on the final part of the Lech River before it flows into the Danube. The written description noted this section as the Lech’s ‘quiet goodbye’ and I felt this was a perfect focus for my composition. It made me consider if the river were to actually say goodbye and disappear forever due to human interference. What if the water were to flow from the Lech River into the Danube until every last drop had gone, never to return, leaving an arid, lifeless riverbed. I wanted ‘The Quiet Goodbye’ to focus on this idea with a narrative of loss; a lament for a river that once was, a love song of sorts, a song of yearning for the departed.

"The satellite imagery shows the obvious changes in the water channel over time. It reminded me of the way human vessels bifurcate and degenerate, often becoming stenosed or occluded due to poor lifestyle choices. It struck me that the Lech River and surrounding landscape also suffered from these poor human choices and wanted this element to be part of the lyric.

"The song starts with voices moving over and through one another to convey the flowing sense of the river and lapping riverbank. This is followed by the piano which again, tries to convey the feel of water. The field recording is heard throughout acting as a reminder that the song is a constant longing for the river."

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Simon Holmes and the Portobello Drone Choir. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"All posts from the Flow project’s WhatsApp group were saved to a text document and numbered as 'segments'.

"These segments were then recited as speech and played in random order.

"Removed from their original sequence, the speech fragments illustrate how meaning is shaped by their place within a broader flow of communications.

"(Phrases such as 'user name' were used to respect the privacy of group members.)"

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Max Greening. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"Cuando el cauce recuerda (When the riverbed remembers) is a piece created for the Flow project, within Cities and Memory, which in this edition focuses on exploring the presence and memories of water in different territories. The work stems from a field recording made on the Lech River, on the outskirts of Augsburg. It is in this stretch of the river where the landscape opens up again: the riverbed reclaims space and its sound expands.

"The work is situated in a sonic territory that navigates between soundscape and electroacoustic music and suggests, through an everyday moment—a scene of encounter between nature, industrial memory, and community life—that it constitutes the initial material of the composition.

"The field recording underwent a spectral analysis process that allowed for the separation of different sound components. Each of these layers was subsequently transformed using various sound processing and synthesis techniques, including temporal stretching, filtering, and spectral manipulations. From these operations, new textures, densities, and perspectives of the original material emerged, generating an expanded auditory field.

"Rather than simply reconstructing the place in a documentary style, the piece seeks to explore its latent resonances. Processed fragments of the river and the sound of voices are transformed into sound currents themselves, revealing invisible or inaudible layers of the environment.

"In this sense, water appears as a form of song that is heard again after having been silenced. When the river returns, it is thus an invitation to listen attentively, to resonate with the flow of the landscape, and to recover, through play and sonic imagination, our sensitive relationship with rivers."

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Jorge Martínez Valderrama. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"I selected an area of the River Lech within the city of Augsburg, Bavaria. I was intrigued by the changing relationship between humans and river, and the different uses of the natural flowing water in this place. I discovered Augsburg is one of the oldest settled places in Germany (around 2000 years). This fuelled my imagination in considering the scale and scope of change- within both humanity, and the natural environment, that the river has borne witness to over time. I was really struck by the impact of human activity on the river, not least the disruption of its natural flow and use of the Lech for multiple hydro-power plants along its course. 

"I took a walk along several stretches of the water in and around Augsburg and my overwhelming sense was that it needed our care and attention and that we have a responsibility to the guardianship of its course. Within the composition I wanted to depict contrasting sensations that I felt portrayed something of the complexities of this stretch of river, its history, its present and its future, including flux, chaos, beauty, dischord/disharmony and solidarity. 

"Working with my long-standing collaborator and dear friend, we shared ideas and musical parts back and forth, and spoke about different aspects of the piece, and slowly over quite some time, the elements that seeemed to belong, began to emerge. We were both interested in the sense of all the different layers that comprise a river and its environment, thinking vertically as well as horizontally along its course."

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Suzi Lamb and Nicky Rushton. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"For centuries, the river Lech has played an integral part in the city of Augsburg’s water management system, which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage. In this system, a network of canals carries water from the Lech into the city while a network of streams carries spring water from the forest south of Augsburg into the city for drinking. While the clear spring water is potable, the Lech water, carrying sediments, is more suited to industrial uses (watermills, power generation etc.). In order not to mix the different types of water, the engineers devised a series of culverts or siphons (Düker in German) where underground streams can cross each other without mixing their water. 

"This (and the fact that in the original field recording from the Flow project, the water from the Lech is completely inaudible because masked entirely by human-made sound) inspired the structure of this piece, which is based, both in time and in space, around the contrast of clear vs sedimentary, natural vs cultural: it starts with an unprocessed hydrophone recording we made in one of the local streams – water as the source of all life – , then introduces birdsong as a symbol of a natural landscape (which we also recorded locally near the streams in question), which then gives way to the sound of human labour, such as digging a canal (digging into mud.wav by Stefan21100190 -- https://freesound.org/s/593113/ -- License: Creative Commons 0). 

"This human intervention opens the main part of the piece, a long crossfade of our untreated (‚clear‘) and musically processed (‚sedimentary‘) hydrophone recordings. As these two flows of sound cross each other, they sonically represent the working of a Düker. In the final part of the piece, the gong-like sound of the processed recording fades into the very distinctly human-made sound of church bells. (Being based in Augsburg, we identified the recording location of field recording #22, near one of the canals which enter the city from the forest to its south, thanks to the characteristic sound of the bells of the church of St Ulrich and St Afra. For the long crossfade from the Düker sounds to the church bells, we made our own recording of the church bells). 

"As our sonic narrative follows the canals and streams through the southern forest northward into the city, the journey of the piece parallels that of the river Lech. The very last segment of the piece (church bells, voices, traffic) consists of the original Flow field recording #22 minus a few seconds at the end, but otherwise unedited. It ends with the sound of a car engine starting, which can be seen as a shorthand reference to human intervention in nature, which is also a central concern regarding the river Lech."

Section of the river Lech reimagined by KLONK. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"生生不息 — translated here as Circle of Life — is one of the most profound concepts in Chinese philosophy, drawn from the I Ching (Yijing or Book of Changes), where it is expressed as “生生之謂易” (“the generation of life is what is called change”). Philosophically rooted in classical Chinese thought, especially interpretations of the Yijing, it views this perpetual becoming as the fundamental character of reality — the “great virtue” of heaven and earth, where change itself is the mechanism of ongoing creation rather than destruction. It’s optimistic in tone: life doesn’t just endure against odds; it thrives through inherent creativity and interconnectedness, producing ever more complexity and possibility. 

"This principle highlights resilience and harmony in natural processes — how fragility and strength coexist in endless regeneration, how intervention (human or environmental) can disrupt or restore the flow, but the underlying impulse toward generation remains undiminished. In the context of a river like the Lech, it manifests vividly: from its alpine source it flows onward, eroding, reshaping, nourishing, recovering from floods and human alterations alike, yet never ceasing to create — new channels, new habitats, new cycles of life. No matter the obstacles, the river’s inherent vitality keeps generating, embodying this eternal, unstoppable renewal.

"My piece for the river Lech begins in serene, everyday harmony. It opens with the bright calls of birds — pure voices of the living landscape — joined by gentle flute notes that drift like morning light over water. Beneath them flows the soft murmur of the river itself, interwoven with the relaxed chatter and laughter of people eating and talking at a riverside restaurant. This is life along the Lech as it is today: ordinary, peaceful, and quietly interdependent.

"As the music unfolds, subtle dissonances begin to emerge and grow. They trace the long story of human intervention — the straightening of channels, the building of dams and embankments, the gradual encroachment of cities and farmland. At the same time, they echo the river’s own restless nature: centuries of erosion carving new paths, floods reshaping gravel bars, the constant migration of the channel as it discovers fresh routes across the valley floor. Layer by layer, these tensions accumulate, reflecting countless transformations — both natural and imposed — that have sculpted the Lech into the river we see now.

"Yet after every wave of change, the music does not break. Instead, it circles back, returning to the same calm opening textures, now deeper and more resonant. The bird calls reappear, the flute line floats once more, and the river’s voice flows on, gently carrying the sounds of human life with it. Through every difficulty and every alteration, the Lech remains unstoppable. It embodies 生生不息 — Circle of Life — ceaseless generation, endless renewal. No matter how much we constrain or redirect it, the river’s vital force keeps creating new possibilities, new habitats, and new cycles of life. What appears as disruption is, in truth, part of an eternal becoming."

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Anna Vienna Ho. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"I have been to Landsberg several times and am referring here to the place in the old town next to the weir. The piece represents the surroundings at this location with the constant sound of the river and people sitting in cafés and walking around, and imagines that you are in the river itself, drifting along.

"I only used the field recordings in different pitches, slowed down and sped up, like some parts of the original recordings. I made further edits and built up layers of the different sounds, creating a mixture of natural and alien sounds that interact with each other. The presence of the river and the weir dominates, or at least accompanies, life in this particular environment and influences people's perceptions both consciously and unconsciously."  

Section of the river Lech reimagined by EMERGE. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"I was struck by a paradox in this segment of the river's story. How at the same time, the river here is both so heavily modified - by channelisation and with a dam for hydropower - and yet, this reservoir also offers a kind of nature 'oasis'. As Martina Cecchetto explained; "widely lacking in natural geomorphic dynamics - so much so that there is a redirection of the layer of Quaternary gravels (and unpredictable incision rates to the channel bed - )". 

"And yet, "Whilst the reservoir also here, is artificial and this place is "devoid of millions of years of minerals...it hosts pristine nature in its present form". I was also struck by the maps and visuals showing the once multiple channels of river - now a straightened single channel river, and the beautiful coloured video realisation. 

"Taking Flow artist Salma Caller's wonderful suggestion, of incorporating preceding segment sounds, this number 20 sound work requotes and resamples from Bill McKenna's segment 1's offered extract and from Anja Kreysing's segment 19's offered extract, and layers segment 20's field recording and resampled versions with original musical compositions to offer a musical, sonic remembering by the river. The river remembering its geological foundation, its forced changes and its ever-present memory of flow and life. 

"A story of place working across layers of time and sounds simultaneously."

Credits: 
Musicians - Gideon Brazil - saxophones, Elliott Folvig - electric guitar, Miranda Hill - double bass, Elissa Goodrich - compositions and vibraphone. 

"And so the story of this particular section of the river is a paradox; one that carries beauty and dislocation in equal measure."

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Elissa Goodrich. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.