Aspects of Lemuria

Madagascar is still home to the lemurs, a primate that lives exclusively on this island. At the same time, more than a hundred different types of lemurs have been documented — a fact that essentially challenges biological taxonomy: a myriad of different subspecies challenge the concept of a species as such. Both this diversity and the fact that lemurs communicate with cries and loud, jarring sounds may have inspired Lemur as the name of a musical quartet with an unconventional instrumental lineup. When Carl Linnaeus classified these animals, however, he named them lemurs because lemurs are nocturnal. In the writings of Virgil and Ovid, lemures are described as mythological ghosts haunting their living relatives at night. Every May, the Romans held ceremonies called lemuria, intended to keep these evil spirits away. “I call them lemurs, because they primarily move around at night,” Linnaeus wrote, “– in a way somewhat similar to humans, they roam with a slow pace.”

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When musicians have played together for as long as Lemur, individual practices and collective experiences built over years concentrate in musical moments. Also, even though sounds in Lemuria do not seem to refer to anything specific, no sound is entirely abstract. Sounds have sources and directions. They follow a course and have timbral colours shaped by movements, bodies, materials, spaces, instruments.

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Having followed Lemur for many years, my experience is that for this quartet, the social and musical collaboration between them is just as important as the music it yields.

Lemur places great emphasis on method, on testing and reflecting around how they interact to make music together. In this sense, Lemuria is a self-study. Sometimes, it is as if one can hear how the parameters of sound and strategies of composing that drive the music forward, have been collaboratively evaluated, discussed and democratically agreed upon, and one might search for some – thing unplanned or unfinished, for the crack in everything. Cracks may inspire listening. At least, certainty might leave less responsibility to a listener: she can board the passing musical train and let herself be transported along its track.

Hild Borchgrevink on Lemuria