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About
psalm - Latin psalmus (‘song sung to the harp’); used in Vulgate to translate Hebrew mizmōr (‘religious song’) - Hellenistic Greek ψαλμός (psalmos, ‘the sound of the harp or cithara’) - Ancient Greek ψάλλειν (psallein, ‘to twitch or twang a string’)
Most people take language for granted. The complex ways in which it evolves and adapts are largely unnoticed – it all occurs, so to speak, ‘right under your nose’. Psalm shows a glimpse of linguistic evolution through the other side of the dictionary – the way that humans take a mere speech-sound; give it meaning; and make it a word. But then the word goes out of control: it mutates; finding its way into other languages; branching; splitting; merging. It camouflages itself in the phonology and morphology of the environment, adapts around culture, technology and politics – and while old languages and civilisations die and new ones grow, it lives on, constantly twisting into new shapes.
Performance history
06 Jul 2013: Performed by Peter Barber at the Nelson Composers' Workshop, Nelson School of Music, in Nelson.