Texts

[sen_no_ongaku]

Since I began writing for voices (thanks to wavyarms), I've found that I very much prefer to set unconventional texts. The idea of setting poetry has little appeal to me[1]; when left to my own devices, I've chosen:

- silly cat haiku
- spam
- a molotov cocktail recipe
- a list of names

For my current project for chorus, string quartet, and electric guitar (due in December, to be premiered in March!), I'll be setting an amalgam of excerpts from:

- Executive Order 9066
- Relocation instructions
- A Supreme Court decision
- A loyalty questionnaire
- Postcards and letters from interned Americans[2]

And it recently dawned on me that in part, I choose the texts I do because I'm not interested in expressing myself directly, but in expressing myself by expressing others[3]. This was made more clear to me during the Abbie Hoffman Estate incident. I feel now (though I'm not sure I consciously realized it then) that, as a composer, it's more powerful to speak through somebody else's words than your own, and having to use (however disguised) my own voice diminished the impact of Cocktail[4].

But setting somebody else's poetry is speaking through them, right? Somehow, I feel it isn't, and I can't exactly put my finger on why. I think it might be because when setting poetry, to a large extent I'm speaking as the poet, taking the poet's voice as my own (or vice versa), and so I'm basically still expressing myself.

Another issue might be that poetry is intended as art, art that I'm subsuming and substituting with another media, whereas the texts I find compelling to set are not intended as art, and so there isn't a weird sense of refraction and imposition in using somebody else's creations.
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(1) Though I once had ideas for a couple of song cycles on E. E. Cummings and Jane Kenyon, but nothing ever really came of them.

(2) Though I actively try not to follow any role models in terms of musical material, development, and technique, I do follow Steve Reich's lead in terms of what kinds of texts to set.

(3) One of the pieces I'm proudest of is a setting of a love poem by E. E. Cummings; and I think I was able to do it because it was written to express dietrich and imlad.

(4) Certainly for me, anyway, since nobody got to hear the original version except the performers.

Comments

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

I would totally love to hear a series of song cycles on ee cummings and Jane Kenyon -- Kenyon was for years my absolute favorite poet, and is still very high on the list of poets whose work I most admire.

And yeah, the Steve Reich connection is obvious. Huh. Maybe I'll go listen to "Tehillim" again now. I always associate that piece with this season, maybe in part because of the custom of reciting hallel (a series of psalms -- e.g. tehillim) on Passover.

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, the ideas I had for those song cycles seem like they were conceived by somebody else; I can't imagine writing those pieces as who I am now.

[scottahill.livejournal.com]

I would totally love to hear a series of song cycles on ee cummings
All the notes would have to be in lower case, of course. :P

[2h2o.livejournal.com]

You wrote the text to "Cocktail"? That one bugged me because it was wrong (you don't use gasoline by itself!), but that text feels almost as randomly selected as the others.

I wonder whether using a non-art text is freeing because there's no need to conform the music with it; you're more able to have the music speak for itself, and the voice comes closer to being merely another instrument. I don't like much of Yes, but apparently their sometimes bizarre lyrics came out of choosing what sounded good rather than what message was intended. Einstein on the Beach uses that technique, too, with long passages that are nothing but counting. (Would you be interested in setting a mathematical proof to music?)

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

I adapted "Cocktail" from the Wikipedia article on Molotov Cocktails, and was constrained by the music I had already written for the excerpt from Steal This Book, so I had to create and edit a text according to the melodies that were already there.

My choice of texts does offer me much more freedom in terms of the range of appropriate things I can accomplish, in that there's no emotional context I'm beholden to; but I still feel the need to communicate something about the texts, to make them something more than just something to hang my music on. I do prefer texts that are written as emotionally neutrally as possible, that are powerful not because of their language but from their contexts.

Incidentally, I've come to the opinion that there's no way to make voice "merely another instrument". I think the brain is hardwired to latch on to the voice as a focal point, no matter the context in which it appears.

[2h2o.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, I've come to the opinion that there's no way to make voice "merely another instrument". I think the brain is hardwired to latch on to the voice as a focal point, no matter the context in which it appears.

I think you're right, but it can certainly be diminished or disguised. The Anonymous 4 performance I attended a few weeks ago accomplished some of that by placing the soloists near the altar so that their voices were quieter and more filtered by the cathedral's architecture.

[ltlbird.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's so much that we focus on the human voice so much as words, though I think both come into play. In a piece in which the voice parts have no words, one probably focuses a lot on the voice parts still, unless there's a particularly interesting or striking instrumental part. However, if you could take the words away from the voices, say project them on a screen, I think they would draw more attention than the voices.

I guess what I am saying is that we are naturally attuned to the human voice, but we are even more attuned to language.