It’s a mix of controlled and chaotic — planned and unplanned — when ship horns meet the wind, fog and paved streets of downtown St. John's; a unique symphony that’s returned to the city once again.
The St. John’s Harbour Symphony — a distinctive and unique tradition that’s now celebrating its 40th anniversary — has returned, part of the bi-annual Sound Symposium festival.
For the next week at 12:30 sharp each day, volunteers will board ships in port and try their best to make music out of the ship’s horns — and whatever else the listener hears.
“For some people it's the first time they experience the environment as a musical element,” said Gayle Young, who has composed three pieces for the Harbour Symphony since its inception in 1983.
Each piece is composed in a unique system. Instead of time signatures or treble clefs, the monotone horn blasts are marked as dots in a grid, with each box representing one second.
“It makes it really accessible for non-musicians to participate in something that can be really musical,” said Mahina Graham-Laidlaw, who has volunteered with the festival since 2016.
On Wednesday, she divided the three parts between her fellow volunteers — in some cases, one will count seconds while an assigned partner actually operates the horn — and led them through a rehearsal along Harbour Drive. Volunteers mimicked the sounds of a ship’s horn while counting through the notes.
For Young, the symphony doesn’t start and stop with the formal arrangements. She imagines it as a flow: Ship's horns mixing in with the sounds of daily life and building to a crescendo, then falling down — but never totally away.
Sometimes a ship doesn’t show up as planned; sometimes, a horn doesn’t work. That’s all part of the Harbour Symphony experience.
“There’s all these variables that we can’t control,” said Graham-Laidlaw. “That kind of improvisation, allowing for thing to just be and creating from those places.”
Love it or hate it — and the symphony does hear its share of humbugs — there’s almost no escaping the Harbour Symphony if you live or work in downtown St. John’s. The wailing of the ship horns is enough to quiet conversations and draw people to their windows.
“People participate in it, even if they like it, they don’t like it. They’re subject to it,” said Graham-Laidlaw.
It draws almost countless comparisons — maybe it sounds like the calling of whales, or the roar of a lion.
Maybe it’s just a mess of noise.
“Jeez, come on b'ys, five minutes a day. Give us a break here,” added Mike Furlong, a volunteer whose service record with the Harbour Symphony dates back to its inception.
He hit the horns a few times himself, but says he prefers to compose — so he can hear the whole piece, start to finish.
“I think it says an awful lot about why we live here. It talks about the boats. The vessels that have been sailing here for 500 years, the kind of living that people make off the sea in Newfoundland.”
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