The Horncall

Listen to some extracts of The Horncall! Written for a community music and arts project in Peterculter, the song cycle consists of five movements for soprano, alto and bass,  accompanied by flute and cello:

The Last Salute
Culter Burn
Together We Make Paper
The Horncall
Salmon

The extracts from the sound files beneath are produced in the music composition programme Sibelius.


The song, Culter Burn, presents the history of the paper mill.

Culter Burn, down the hill meandering

Twisting and turning, from Loch Skene to the Dee

Pow’ring mills, sawing wood, grinding meal

Paper in Culter since Bartholomew.

Papermaker from England, with his wife and two sons

Leased the mill, the croft and the land

Rags from the market, collected on Fridays

Washed in the burn, paper in town to be sold

During one of the memory-sharing workshops with former mill employeees last autumn we explored the sound world of the mill. One thing that came forward in this workshop was how the horncall shaped the life of the mill staff and Culter as a whole.

The horncall sounds both far and wide

To waken folk to call then to work,

The hoot it blows day in day out

To announce the early morning.

For many years the Culter folk

Need not a watch, far less a clock

The horn it marked each space of time

And kept the day in line.

This February Friday morn’

Came the last salute of the horn

To say farewell to Culter folk

Black Friday eight-one

Now all is gone the silence irks

Those that answered the call of the work

The mill is now an empty shell

Silence rules the day.

Copyright text and music Petra Vergunst