Mantoux - mezzo soprano and cello (2020)

Instrumentation: mezzo soprano and cello.
Duration: 4 minutes 30 seconds.
Text by: Laurence Barratt-Manning.
Commisioned by: Halcyon.
Premiere: Halcyon (Jenny Duck-Chong & James Larsen), 10.09.22. Summer Hill Church, Sydney, Australia.

Score: purchase here.

WRITER’S NOTE:
The Mantoux test is a method of screening for tuberculosis, and the title of an (undated, unconfirmed) public service announcement film made by Edgar G. Ulmer to help counter the spread of the disease.

Ulmer was an Austrian director who had been apprentice to F. W. Murnau, working on the revered Sunrise and then going on to find obscurity after an affair (later a lifelong marriage) that offended high-ranking Hollywood executives. Much of his career from that point consisted of “for hire” work such as the TB film series (of which Mantoux Test is part) or so-called “Poverty Row” B-movies.

Now, Ulmer’s Detour (made under these conditions) is widely known as a noir classic, his broader filmography is considered seriously, and even his tuberculosis reels are striking for their sense of contamination and hidden threat. Nonetheless, in his lifetime Ulmer felt his work compromised by their clear links to commercial circulation, and perhaps even himself contaminated: in need of (and without) “absolution”.

COMPOSER’S NOTE:
I approached the piece as if it were a short prologue to an imaginary music drama about the life and career of Edgar G. Ulmer.  In Mantoux the singer acts as a form of Greek Chorus or narrator in a prelude to the imagined drama.