Week 4: Literature
Week 4 aims to have you branch out artistically. This week, instead of being given a
portion of a composition to build off of, you will be given a piece of media to consume.
The main goal of this week is to explore a larger prompt and to build up a piece that
captures the theme and feel of the reference material. Additionally, week 4 is about
pulling together a single, larger, coherent piece over the course of the week instead of
7 small individual pieces.
The piece of media provided will take some time to digest and consider, so the prompt will become available 1 day prior to the start of week 4. Additionally, a discussion group will be hosted on the Discord server to share thoughts on the prompt to help process what ideas may be worth pursuing.
It is encouraged that you look back on your prior work over the course of the month and take inspiration from your various Composuary submissions. As part of your submission, you should provide references to your prior pieces that you used so fellow composers can appreciate how your piece was built off of the simpler themes tackled during the month.
Prompt : Famine and Hunger
The prompt for this year's Composuary aims to contextualize hunger and famine into musical form. Tens of millions of human lives have been consumed by hunger over the past few centuries; notable events within this window are the Republics of China's Great Leap Forward, the USSR starvation of Ukraine during the Holodomor, and the British capital squeezing within India and Ireland. These historical famines, while partially triggered by external events (crop failure by blight, changing whether, lack of man power), are more appropriately viewed as malicious behavior of public and private sectors to meet the human right for a sustainable food supply.
The primary article to use for constructing your piece is The Irish Famine Poem which
helps to humanize the suffering faced by the Irish at the hands of the British during
The Great Hunger (known to most non-Irish people as The Irish Potato Famine).
The work by Crash Course is a good overview to the man-made causes of famine.
Additionally, extra reading has been provided to help understand some of these
catastrophes in more detail and you are encouraged to look for resources beyond what's
provided if there is a particular famine you would like understand.
Why should there be hunger and deprivation in any land, in any city,
at any table, when man has the resources and the scientific know-how
to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life? There is
no deficit in human resources. The deficit is in human will
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
Recommended Prereading
Satiation, like any state of vitality, always contains a degree of
impudence, and that impudence emerges first and foremost when the
sated man instructs the hungry one.
~ Anton Chekhov
Primary Work
We know that it is possible for us multinational companies to feed
even 15 billion people in the world if we take the right actions.
~ Helmut Mucher
C.E.O of Nestle 1990-1997
Further Reading
The Great Hunger
Behind the Bastards: That one time Britian Did a Genocide: Part 1
Behind the Bastards: That one time Britian Did a Genocide: Part 2
Behind the Bastards: That one time Britian Did a Genocide: Part 3
The Great Leap Forward
Holodomor
