‘Every Day’ is a new collaborative piece by two Hungarian contemporary composers and artists, Ábris Gryllus (The Death of Rave, Farbwechsel) and Dávid Somló. Originally conceived as an installation and premiered at the 2022 edition of Budapest Autumn Festival, ‘Every Day’ is a document of grief, and an attempt to render the dry daily statistics of the Covid-19 pandemic into something that is both physically and emotionally tangible.
Transposing the Hungarian daily data of the pandemic into musical parameters, the composers were able to create a musical and community experience, one which surrounded the listener and encouraged deep contemplation. During the Budapest Autumn Festival, the piece was played from 20 three-metre-high columns representing the counties of Hungary; here, ‘Every Day’ is mixed down to a stereo file, but its tragic, mourning character remains intact.
The musical texture and intensity of the piece follows the waves of the pandemic, as the numerical changes of the daily statistics affect the pitch, volume, rhythm, timbre, tone and other musical parameters. Its forlorn tone is reminiscent of church bells – resonant, incessant, disconsolate and unyielding – and its seemingly everlasting character a reminder of the strangeness of the passage of time during the era of the pandemic. On 'Every Day' Gryllus and Somló condense 2 tragic, strange years into ~40 minutes of audio, a gesture simultaneously futile and invaluable.
Warm Winters, 2023