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Stamp him in a Stone Mortar till his Bones are Broken

by The Living Earth Show

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Gary Strasburg
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Joseph M. Colombo
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Stamp him in a Stone Mortar till his Bones are Broken
Composed by Quinn Collins

This piece has a very long and weird name. The title comes from a recipe for cock ale, which can be found in The Compleat Housewife, a cookbook written by Eliza Smith and first published in London in 1727:

"Take ten gallons of ale, and a large cock, the older the better; parboil the cock, flay him, and stamp him in a stone mortar till his bones are broken (you must craw and gut him when you flay him); then put the cock into two quarts of sack, and put it to three pounds of raisins of the sun stoned, some blades of mace, and a few cloves; put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find the ale has done working, put the ale and bag together into a vessel; in a week or nine days time bottle it up; fill the bottle but just above the neck, and give the same time to ripen as other ale."

Of course the whole recipe and the idea that a raw chicken would somehow enhance a beer’s flavor is pretty strange. It was a custom in brewing for a long time to try things like this, like dumping rats in the vat with the belief that they would increase the product’s overall alcohol content. For much of beer’s history from antiquity onward, it remained a mysterious liquid with magical significance. It still seems that way sometimes. However, the thing I found oddest about it is how it anthropomorphizes the ingredient in personal pronouns, which made the whole recipe seem all the more alien and savage. With instructions to commit acts of violence on the carcass of a once-living creature, it almost comes across as an act of ritual sacrifice. And it just sounds really metal.

The piece was built by fitting its material into a predetermined temporal cast like Brutalist architecture, where a rigid, overall structure is planned and constructed beforehand, and it takes form when concrete is poured into the mold. It was written for The Living Earth Show and So Percussion in 2015.

credits

released December 28, 2020
Composed by Quinn Collins
Performed by The Living Earth Show (Andy Meyerson & Travis Andrews)
Recorded at Princeton University-Woolworth Center of Musical Studies-Studio A
Engineered by Quinn Collins & Travis Andrews
Produced & Mixed by Quinn Collins & Travis Andrews
Mastered by Ryan Kleeman

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