The Oddity Effect

Theorising the significance of identity - similarity and difference - within shoals of fish, the oddity effect is a scientific hypothesis which posits that individual members of a shoal who look different are more likely to fall prey to predators. Viewed like this, you wouldn’t want to be the one who stands out. Of course, this negative aspect is just one side of oddity, beyond the world of fish the relationships between groups and individuals are never so simple!

When I first suggested the idea to Paul I was imagining a piece that would stay in the sea, but he took the idea and ran with it, transmuting the initial shoal into the herd, flock and crowd that comprise the subsequent movements. With each scene we hear the same idea expressed through a different environment, and what they all have in common is a recurrent dramatic structure with the inescapable existential question “WHO ARE YOU?” at its heart:

• first state: a group situation disrupted by emergence of a ‘solo’ character (though not necessarily represented by an actual solo voice)
• drama: the question (WHO ARE YOU?) followed by a ‘gulp’ (collective reaction to the solo)
• second state: reconfiguration of the group situation

This model applies to the first three scenes, but changes when we meet the crowd in scene 4, where we find the question ‘WHO ARE YOU?’ (sung by solo soprano and alto in octaves) woven between the chaotic collective mutterings of alarming news headlines. Most of these headlines cancel each other out, becoming indistinct elements of the musical texture, but in the midst of this desperate mumbling a momentary chorale appears “Der neue Kalte Krieg, Die Krise…”, and then at the end of the scene we arrive at a moment of hopeful reflection with the thrice repeated “Wir müssen neue Paradiese erfinden…”. But that is before the more emphatic re-statement of the question, following which – throughout scene 5 – the crowd becomes increasingly hysterical, anxious, wild, angry – and eventually burned-out – amid a mercurial emotional cocktail. The final gulp – short and not-so-sweet (eleven repeated beats of tutti outburst) – is followed only by wistful melancholy, the choir musing “Ich werde müde! Lass uns gehen!”, after all not so hopeful as the end of the previous scene.