Description
The Mosquito (marketed as the ‘Beethoven’ in France) is an electronic device, used to deter loitering by young people, which emits a sound with a very high frequency. The sound can typically only be heard by people below 25 years of age, as the ability to hear high frequencies deteriorates in humans with age.
In 2007 I collaborated with artist Rory Macbeth on an installation for the exhibition ‘Picturing the Social Order’ (Leeds City Art Gallery) which showed how art had depicted aspects of British class structure and social division over several centuries. Rory asked me to transcribe the sound of the Mosquito device – considerably slowed down and lowered in pitch - to be performed live and in recorded form intermittently throughout the exhibition.
I later discovered that there also exists a similar device which broadcasts ‘royalty-free classical music’ for the same purpose.
In the UK Liberty described the Mosquito as a "sonic weapon directed against children and young people." A report for the Council of Europe in 2010 called for a ban, suggesting use of the Mosquito may breach human rights law.
My piece ‘Mosquito’ makes extended use of that earlier transcription (heard at the outset in flute and oboe) set alongside one of my favourite pieces of ‘royalty-free classical music’, the Lamentations of Jeremiah by Thomas Tallis; the extreme contrast is deliberate! At first the two musics alternate in fast/slow cycles but they soon begin to influence one another and to form variations which take the music in different directions.
Mosquito was first performed by Souza Winds in September 2012 and was revised in the autumn of 2017.