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Work on ‘The Miners’ Hymns’ began
in the UK, with Jóhann Jóhannsson
and Bill Morrison making trips to
Durham for research. Looking into
film archives and historical records of
mining communities, they discovered
a culture of brass band music. “The
music I connected to the most were
the hymns—this 19th century religious
music that these brass bands per-
formed a lot,” Jóhann explains. “The
title of the piece comes from a hymn
composed to commemorate a mining
accident in the town of Gresford in
the 1930s where hundreds of miners
died—the hymn is well known in the
region and is commonly called 'The
Miners’ Hymn.’ I think I ended up
filtering my own sound and sensibili-
ties through these British influences
and coming up with something of my
own.”
Unlike the traditional film-scoring
process, where the entire film is shot
and then music placed on top, Bill
showed Jóhann some sample footage
to which Jóhann wrote music, and the
final version of the film was edited
around the already completed score.
Jóhann says that it was the human el-
ements of the project that interested
him most, as he wanted to make a sen-
sitive tribute to local culture and his-
tory. Thus he decided on, as he puts it,
“a kind of requiem for a lost industry.”
“It was a challenge for both of us,
especially as foreigners, to work with
a foreign culture where the wounds
are still quite raw,” Jóhann says. “Coal
mining was an important industry in
the region for 200 years, and over a
few years in the 1980s it was more or
less shut down with significant con-
sequences for the community. Many
of those communities have still not
recovered from the loss. In the North
of England, there was a brass band in
every village, manned by coal miners.
The brass bands were the soundtrack
to the coal miners’
lives, from cradle to
grave. Even after the
industry went ex-
tinct, the brass bands
remained and are
now manned by the
sons and daughters
of coal miners.”
In the four years
since its incep-
tion, “The Miners’
Hymns” has been
performed around
the world, but never
before in Iceland.
The piece was origi-
nally written for
brass band, pipe or-
gan, and electronics,
harkening back to
the traditions of the coal miners and
their families playing in village brass
bands. For the Iceland Symphony ver-
sion during Airwaves, the brass play-
ers in the orchestra remain a feature
of the work, while the organ part has
been re-envisioned for the strings and
woodwinds. The players will be re-
hearsing the piece in the weeks lead-
ing up to the premiere, timing their
playing to the film.
“Hymns” con-
tains all of the sig-
nature elements we
have come to rec-
ognize in Jóhann
Jóhannsson’s works:
long buildups, gor-
geous sustained
chords, repeating
melodic motives,
and percussion, of-
ten electronically
generated. Textures
can move in waves
from ambient to the
intensity of a run-
away train. These
compositional quali-
ties have led to the
British press to call
‘The Miners’ Hymns’ a kind of "Icelan-
dic Minimalism." Jóhann doesn’t shy
away from “the ‘m-word,’” but finds
it a bit tiring; he prefers to leave the
labels to the critics and let his work
speak for itself.
Minimalist or not, the musical style
of the piece is sure to evoke memories
that move many a listener, whether
or not the audiences have lived in ar-
eas connected to the coal industry.
“I hope that the audience will allow
themselves to be immersed in the film
and the music and that it gives people
space to reflect and contemplate and
hopefully be transported,” Jóhann
says. “We've been touring with it in
Europe and the US and I've been sur-
prised and pleased by how well people
respond to the piece… I think the piece
has universal themes of work, history,
struggle and commemoration that ap-
ply everywhere.”
Jóhann Jóhannsson and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra will
present the Iceland premiere of ‘The Miners’ Hymns’ during
Airwaves in a special version arranged for the orchestra. The
work was collaboratively created in 2010 by Jóhann and Ameri-
can filmmaker Bill Morrison as a kind of “requiem for a lost
industry,” specifically that of coal mining in Northern England.
Info
What
‘The Miners’ Hymns’
When
November 7 at 20:00
Where
Harpa’s Eldborg Hall
How Much
Tickets can be purchased at midi.is
WORDS BY NATHAN HALL
Jóhann Jóhannsson
presents ‘The Miners’
Hymns’ with The Iceland
Symphony Orchestra
A Requiem For
A Lost Industry