Homage to Rachel Carson: An Update on Jack Ellitt’s Sound Constructions

In 2023, I curated the exhibition The Edge of the Sea at the Len Lye Centre where I related Len Lye’s practice to his various homes in aquatic and coastal locations. In effect, it was an early step in my research around his paintings produced in Martha’s Vineyard during the late 1940s.

I drew the exhibition title from the third book of Rachel Carson’s ‘sea’ trilogy. Carson (1907–1964) was an American marine biologist, writer, and environmentalist whose book Silent Spring (1962) exposed the dangers of pesticides (particularly DDT). This text challenged chemical industries, raised public awareness of ecological interdependence, and is widely credited with sparking the modern environmental movement. Her earlier ‘sea’ trilogy (Under the Sea-Wind [1941], The Sea Around Us [1951], and The Edge of the Sea [1955]) traced the sea’s natural history, ecology, and coastal environments, established Carson as a leading science writer and a lyrical interpreter of nature. Although not her most well-known publication, The Edge of the Sea felt appropriate as a title for a casual jump onto an exhibition of Lye’s works.

Rachel Carson, 1944. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Carson would have been unaware of Lye’s work. While Lye was likely to known of Carson’s, I have yet to find any reference to her in his archives. However, I connect the two through a third party – the composer Jack Ellitt (1902 - 2001). Born Avrom Yitzhak Elitski, Ellitt befriended Lye in Sydney in the mid-1920s and the pair collaborated in London during the late 1920s and through the 1930s on many of Lye’s acclaimed experimental films. The best of these films can be considered precursors to the music video. Innovative decades ahead of their time, Ellitt deserves overdue credit for his part in their success. Adjacent to his work with Lye, Ellitt was experimental in his own field, composing in the mode of musique concrete and pioneering direct sound techniques. The two collaborators parted ways professionally in the 1930s and their friendship ended in the 1940s with Lye’s move to New York.

Jack Ellitt, Kincumber, NSW. Courtesy of Roger Horrocks.

A curious coda to Lye and Ellitt’s relationship was a key component of the Edge of the Sea exhibition – a composition produced by Ellitt around 1983 (and living again in New South Wales). Titled Homage to Rachel Carson, the 16-minute composition served as an elegy to Lye with Ellitt’s spoken word reminiscence (fondly yet not uncritical) of his friend interspersed with natural sounds. Ellitt described the sound constructions as “a narrative for a speaker, with birds and water accompaniment”. The piece, published from a recording held by the Len Lye Foundation by Shame File Music, can be heard below.

The connection to Carson has been difficult to fully gauge. Composer Camille Robinson (in his 2010 dissertation on Ellitt’s work) makes the following observation:

While still at the Hermitage in Sussex, Jack noticed that birds in the area inexplicably acted as though they were sick and wondered at the possible cause. He later read in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) of the misuse of chemical pesticides and their effect on bird, animal, and human life, and moved he went on to compose two pieces inspired by her writings. The first is currently unavailable; however, the second, “a narrative for a speaker, with birds and water accompaniment” dealing with the death of Len Lye, a ‘strange bird’ from his own life, has been digitised …

Robinson’s overview of this composing around Carson’s themes was hindered by the complicated state of Ellitt’s archive of recordings. Currently working through what remains of his recordings produced in Australia from the 1970s onwards and notes by Professor Roger Horrocks, I have been able to piece together an expanded perspective on Ellitt’s work.

A brief overview for now can clarify that the title Homage to Rachel Carson applies not to the piece regarding Lye but to a larger suite of five compositions. The Lye piece is the final in the suite, A Recitation. The full suite looks like this.

1. Night in Calvery 

2. Christ on the Cross

3. Mesozoic Morning

4. Humoresque

5. A Recitation 

I have identified (and digitised) tapes relating to parts one and two. Both follow the format of the Lye piece – sound constructions principally of Ellitt’s voice (in English and Hebrew) and bird song. I cannot yet determine yet whether these recordings are final compositions (given the dozens of available tapes). Parts three and four are still to be confirmed among the recordings. Hopefully, I’ll be able to establish a complete suite in due course.

Among Ellitt’s recordings from the 1970s is one piece appearing to stand outside the Homage to Rachel Carson suite that is thematically related, albeit of a starker, eco-pessimist quality. Lullaby is a sound construction featuring Ellit’s sung vocals. A ticking clock opens the composition followed by Ellitt’s voice over manipulated birdsong and a haunting, breathy soundscape. Ellitt presents a nightmarish vision of modernity through a fusion of industrial imagery, religious apocalypse, and bodily grotesquerie. The first 2 minutes/verses of the 8-minute Lullaby composition can be heard below.

I'll be adding further posts as I progress with research around Ellitt's work, hopefully piecing together the full Homage to Rachel Carson composition. Thank you to Professor Roger Horrocks for supporting this research.