David Lang’s Death Speaks album sounds like it might be the sort of thing you’re after. It’s contemporary classical, based on the texts of Schubert’s lieder. Lang went through them, picked out lines where Death is speaking and then translated and recast them into his own songs, sung by Shara Nova out of My Brightest Diamond and played by a chamber ensemble (featuring Bryce Dessner and Owen Pallett for maximum DiSosity). It’s stark and eerie, but also somehow welcoming.
If that wasn’t enough death for you, the album pairs the Death Speaks songs with another piece called Depart, commissioned for a French morgue to be played in the space where the bereaved see their loved ones for the last time. It’s eighteen minutes of multitracked cello drone and wordless women’s voices, lovely stuff.
