Gilgamesh & Enkidu

Composer and sound designer Ted Moore presents his Ravello release Gilgamesh & Enkidu, a six-movement interpretation of the ancient Mesopotamian epic poem scored for string quartet and laptop. The work follows the friendship of Gilgamesh and the wild Enkidu, his enemy-turned-friend, as they defy the gods and defeat their beast, Humbaba, in the name of humanity. After the gods murder Enkidu as punishment, Gilgamesh falls into despair and wanders the earth in search of the secret of immortality so he can resurrect his friend. When an empty-handed Gilgamesh returns to his kingdom, he sees that, in his absence, his people have built great monuments in his honor. He realizes that humanity is destined for mortality, and that overcoming adversity is part of the full human experience.

The Enkidu String Quartet deftly navigates Moore’s complex and demanding score. Moore and the Enkidu Quartet create a distinctive sonic environment, where convention and the familiar meet strangeness and the unknown. Moore illustrates the myth’s vibrant images with various musical effects, including polyrhythms knocked out on the bodies of their instruments, scratchy sounds from playing behind the bridge, and eerie harmonic glissandi. The most ambitious effects, however, come from the use of electronics with the programming language SuperCollider. In live performance, SuperCollider captures the sounds of the strings, manipulates them, and moves them around the performance space. Moore does not, however, let these stunning effects overshadow the riches to be found in the work’s more grounded moments, just as Gilgamesh comes to realize the value of humanity’s mortality.