Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco

Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco ("I Mourn the Dead, I Call the Living") for eight-track tape is a musical composition created in 1980 by Jonathan Harvey, with the assistance of Stanley Haynes and Xavier Rodet,[2] commissioned by the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

The two sounds contrasted are the tenor bell at Winchester Cathedral, England and the voice of the composer's son Dominic, at the time a chorister there, both recorded by John Whiting.

The text is taken from that written on the bell: Horas Avolantes Numero, Mortuos Plango: Vivos ad Preces Voco ("I count the fleeing hours, I lament the dead: the living I call to prayer").

"[3] The organization of the piece, "modulating 'from a bigger bell to a smaller bell,'" may, "be interpreted in a number of ways:"[6] According to Curtis Roads, "Three compositions produced in the 1980s stand as good examples of compositional manipulation of analysis data: Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1981) [sic] by Jonathan Harvey, Désintegrations (1983, Salabert Trajectoires) by Tristan Murail, and Digital Moonscapes (1985, CBS/Sony) by Wendy Carlos.

"[7] Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco is notable both within and without Harvey's career: "it showed the [IRCAM] institute's apparently esoteric research programme could yield music capable of appealing to a wider audience,"[6] and it "continues the process, established in the String Quartet, of initiating a work with the detailed investigation of a single sound—in this case the Winchester bell.