Song History
Ever since I was a child I have had a big interest in History. Mostly ancient egyptian, Mayan, Incan etc, but also early American History, (for some reason English and European history is not as interesting to me, probably why I did so bad in my A levels). I read several books on the Salam witch trials at school and kept a few notes about them.
I've had a mad idea to write a fairly long musical piece, titled "The Guilt of Innocent blood" for a long time, which would have several sections. The title comes
from part of a apology from Ann Putnum in 1706 about her part in the 1692 Salem witch trials. Ann, then aged 12, was one of the accusers in the trials, accusing
62 people along with dozens of people that her parents accused (mostly family enemies).
"It was of great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time whereby I justly fear that I have been instrumental to bring upon myself and
this land the guilt of innocent blood".
Towards the end of the trials, Increase Mather preached a sermon that was later published as "Cases of Conscience concerning Evil spirits personating men". It is from
this title I took this little song title. "Cases of Conscience" is the intro section to a bigger body of work.
In February 2005, the K-v-R website's monthly contest was
titled "Liberate an Unheard Personality", my inital idea for a little heard of
personality trait was Conscience, so decided to dust off the Cases of Conscience idea.
This was initially written on guitar, but later recorded as piano (via a brief harpsichord version), the whole thing
was recorded without real instruments, even the bass is programmed, as to keep it in line with the competitions guidelines.
An idea is brewing for the rest of "The Guilt of Innocent Blood" song, which I'll keep you posted about.
The song comes in a couple of versions. There is the bog standard version, that'll make up
the intro to the longer piece in a couple of different compression rates and a video mix (there is a link below to the video), which includes a voice
over from Mike Jackson, the general chief of staff, commenting on the trial of British soldiers accused of the abuse of Iraqi citizens.
I'm not trying to make any political comment with this, it just sort of accidentally tied in. The video mix and video, will disappear off the site in a few weeks
since it isn't really what the song is about.
©2005 Music Chris Rollason
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Cases Of Conscience (128 encoded 1.3MB)
Cases Of Conscience(192 encoded 1.9MB)