RUTH WHITE - "Flowers of Evil"

RUTH WHITE - Flowers of Evil: An Electronic Setting of the Poem of Charles Baudelaire (Creel Pone)

Label: Limelight
Catalog#: LS 86066
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: US Released: 1969
Genre: Electronic, Pop
Style: Experimental
Credits: Composed By - Ruth White Other [Liner Notes] - Ruth White Other [Translated By] - Ruth White Producer - Ruth White Vocals, Electronics - Ruth White Written-By - Charles Baudelaire

Track-listing:
A1 The Clock (3:00)
A2 Evening Harmony (4:02)
A3 Lover's Wine (2:57)
A4 Owls (2:45)
A5 Mists And Rains (2:06)
B1 The Irremediable (4:55)
B2 The Cat (3:27)
B3 Spleen (2:50)
B4 The Litanies Of Satan (6:50)

To me, Baudelaire's poems are of such unique power that they always seem to rise above the level of the personal and sometimes existential nature of their content. In this composition, I have attempted to parallel the transcendental qualities of the poetry through electronic means.

For the words, I used my own voice as the generator of the original sound to be altered or "dehumanized." This seemed practical since my experiments with the medium were too time consuming to have been easily accomplished with a collaborator.

To modulate my voice, I used a variety of techniques. Changes of timbre were achieved with filters. Tape speed changes were used to control pitch. Into the shape of some words, I injected sound waves and white noise, thus changing the quality of their sound hut not the flow of their delivery. by adding reverberation, I varied atmospheres and decreased or increased space illusions. To accent special words or phrases, I used controlled tape delays. choruses were created by combining slight delays with multiple track recordings.

The musical settings around the voice were made with music concrète materials, a Moog synthesizer, other electronic generators and conventional instruments, which were usually altered electronically.

In the translations, there was no attempt to rhyme the verse as in the original french poems. I tried only to keep the language as direct and simple as possible, for I always found that the dominating power of Baudelaire's ideas 'were in themselves of electrifying force.

- Ruth White

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