Died of Spurn is an interactive music project based on De Profundis, Oscar Wilde’s letter written while he was imprisoned in Reading Gaol. The title is an anagram of De Profundis, shifting “from the depths” into something more blunt and human: rejection, abandonment, and being cast aside.
The project turns the letter into a reading-and-listening experience. As you scroll through the full text of De Profundis, certain passages are highlighted. Clicking a highlighted section plays a song made from that passage. There are 19 songs in total, plus one bonus track. When the original text has been adapted into lyrics rather than used word-for-word, the lyrics are shown beneath the audio so the changes are clear.
The music draws from Irish folk traditions—ballads, laments, and sean-nós. These forms were chosen not for nostalgia, but because they are direct, emotional, and rooted in storytelling. They carry grief, regret, love, and endurance without polish. That felt like a natural match for Wilde’s writing, which moves between bitterness, tenderness, self-criticism, and clarity.
This is not meant to be a definitive or scholarly treatment of De Profundis. It’s a way of slowing down the text and sitting with it. Breaking the letter into songs allows individual moments to breathe, rather than forcing the reader through it in one emotional sweep. The interactive format lets people encounter the work in their own order, reflecting how the letter itself circles around the same feelings again and again. Died of Spurn is about giving Wilde’s words another way to be heard—out loud, imperfectly, and over time. It treats the letter not as a historical object, but as something still capable of speaking, singing, and being felt.
DIED OF SPURN was originally conceived as a mono-opera (some of the arias can be heard in Lieder Ohne Kunst – Tracks 38 to 41) but the project had stalled over the decades; it is now reconceived in a contemporary interactive installation where the music is not only integral to the text, but also colors its emotional context.
CREATED BY: Stephen Chen | COMPLETED: 12/01/2025
Experience full-screen at: https://stephenchensf.com/deprofundis/
