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Distilling the Essence: Vocal Provenance in the Work of Jack Body
Abstract
Jack Body is a prolific New Zealand composer of contemporary art music, who is best known for his engagement with the cultures of our Asian neighbours, and his transcription and transformation of their music has influenced a whole generation of composers in this country. However, in addition to this fascination with non-Western music, the use of voice as a means to express and explore the human condition has been an underlying theme in much of his work. This study uses critical analyses of three specific works by the composer to explore both text setting and his use of vocal provenance as a transformative compositional process. The string quartet Saetas is examined as a straightforward example of vocal provenance in instrumental music. An analysis of the text setting in Love Sonnets of Michelangelo informs an examination of the subsequent work for solo violin and string orchestra Meditations on Michelangelo where Body uses his own earlier vocal work as provenance for instrumental music. Body’s compositional practises in regard to the transformation from voice to instrument can therefore be separated from his response to original text, allowing an examination of the specific techniques he employs in works in which vocal provenance strongly informs instrumental compositions. This written dissertation is submitted with a portfolio of my original compositions that explore the use of voice in solo and choral works, as well as using the provenance of voice for instrumental music. These compositions were informed and influenced by my research of Jack Body’s work.
"The problem of traditions and innovations in vocal and choral performance is a large-scale, many-sided integral system. This phenomenon of musical culture combines the classical direction and modernization of interpretation processes, which determines the topicality of the research. The aim of the article was to reveal the phenomenon of traditions and innovations in vocal and choral art as a complex multi-vector phenomenon that includes components of different scales, content, and functions that they perform. Methods. The research involved theoretical and practical methods. Problem: theoretical methods are represented by the analysis and arrangement of materials; identification of the main elements of the problem; generalization of the data obtained during the research. The practical methods are based on the search for and collection of scientific concepts and empirical data from the fields of performance, history, pedagogy, philosophy, aesthetics, medicine; on the monitoring of educational, as well as concert and performing activities; creative collaboration with soloists and the choral group. Results. The problem of traditions and innovations in vocal and choral performance is based on the following blocks: preservation of classical principles of academic vocal performance; their synthesis with discoveries and achievements of other spheres; modernization promoted by the expansion and updating of the genre framework, as well as modern engineering equipment. Conclusions. The fact of significance of the phenomenon of traditions and innovations in vocal and choral performance for the culture of society was revealed during the research. Its universality as a many-sided, flexible, large-scale integral phenomenon which consists of many different elements that play a leading role in its formation and are closely related was proved. Its interaction with different areas of society is shown. Prospects. The issue of traditions and innovations in vocal and choral performance is constantly enriched with new content, expands the scope of its implementation and interaction with various forms of social consciousness, science, medicine, which necessitates further study of this phenomenon. Keywords: academic vocal performance; performance software support; practice of vocal and choral art; educational and performance activities; breathing exercises; artistic directing; monitoring of educational and concert practice. "
In his ground-breaking book On sonic art, Trevor Wishart takes a wide-ranging look at the new developments in music-making and musical aesthetics made possible by the advent of the computer and digital information processing. His emphasis is on musical rather than technical matters. Beginning with a critical analysis of the assumptions underlying the Western musical tradition and the traditional acoustic theories of Pythagoras and Helmholtz, he goes on to look in detail at such topics as the musical organization of complex sound-objects, using and manipulating representational sounds in the new music, organizing the spatial motion of sounds and the various dimensions of human and non-human utterance. In so doing, he seeks to learn lessons from areas (poetry and sound-poetry, film sound effects and animal communication) not traditionally associated with the field of music.--Back cover.
Despite Rousseauprogress’ of civilization and his suspicions concerning the arts, he none the less articulates a redemptive role for aesthetic experience within modern life. In choosing music as his privileged aesthetic object, he suggests the possibility of an eighteenth-century aesthetic based on experience that anticipates later developments in romanticism and modernism. And by locating the possibility of redemption within aesthetic experience couched in terms of musical performance, he articulates a modern role for the work of art that looks forward to nineteenth- and twentieth-century aesthetic theory from the German Romantics to the Frankfurt School.
The author considers the importance of the voice as a transformative instrument in 20th-century art, particularly in relation to the tape recorder and digital audio technology. He examines his collaborative work with sound poet Bob Cobbing in the 1970s and compares this with a recent gallery installation created with artist John Latham. Research from the 1970s into acoustic voice masking and resonance is contrasted with the use of analog tape process-ing and the sonic potential of computer audio software programs both in studio work and in improvised performance. Finally, the author discusses the implications of these con-frontations between body and machine.
Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) was unquestionably one of the most important philosophers of all time. He trained as a mathematician, and his work in philosophy started as an attempt to provide an explanation of the truths of arithmetic, but in the course of this attempt he not only founded modern logic but also had to address fundamental questions in the philosophy of language and philosophical logic. Frege is generally seen (along with Russell and Wittgenstein) as one of the fathers of the analytic method, which dominated philosophy in English-speaking countries for most of the twentieth century. His work is studied today not just for its historical importance but also because many of his ideas are still seen as relevant to current debates in the philosophies of logic, language, mathematics and the mind. The Cambridge Companion to Frege provides a route into this lively area of research.
La saeta flamenca d'Andalousie est consideree comme faisant partie du domaine du chant flamenco. Ces chants sont interpretes lors des processions et les paroles traitent de la souffrance du Christ et de la douleur de sa mere, la Vierge Marie. Les AA. tentent de definir les modeles musicaux et les caracteristiques modales qui constituent le fondement de l'improvisation dans la saeta flamenca. Ils comparent la structure de la saeta flamenca et de la saeta vieja, afin d'elucider la relation entre les deux types de chants. Ils montrent que ces structures sont tres differentes et qu'il est peu probable que la saeta flamenca trouve son origine dans la saeta vieja. Cependant, la question de l'origine de la saeta flamenca reste ouverte. Les AA. analysent 30 enregistrements de chant flamenco.
The author considers the importance of the voice as a transformative instrument in 20th-century art, particularly in relation to the tape recorder and digital audio technology. He examines his collaborative work with sound poet Bob Cobbing in the 1970s and compares this with a recent gallery installation created with artist John Latham. Research from the 1970s into acoustic voice masking and resonance is contrasted with the use of analog tape processing and the sonic potential of computer audio software programs both in studio work and in improvised performance. Finally, the author discusses the implications of these confrontations between body and machine.
This article is part of PhD research dealing with gender issues in electroacoustic music, focusing on the voice. The first part of the article begins with a discussion of the musical material under research. Thereafter follows an elaborate overview of the number of male and female composers, vocalists and recorded voices in several series of CDs of electroacoustic and computer music. The gendered roles of the live, pre-recorded and synthesised voices are discussed and the musical couple of the male composer and the female vocalist emerges. The second part touches upon several issues raised by the results of part one: the roles of the performer and the composer, (dis)embodiment, femininity and technology. This is a preview into some of the remaining research. In section 2, other music than the CD series of section 1 is discussed as well. The gender patterns are interpreted in a broader context. The role of the female vocalist is many sided. Cyborg voices relate to old patterns as well as new possibilities.
The art of music is no longer limited to the sounding models of instruments and voices. Electoacoustic music opens access to all sounds, a bewildering sonic array ranging from the real to the surreal and beyond. For listeners the traditional links with physical sound-making are frequently ruptured: electroacoustic sound-shapes and qualities frequently do not indicate known sources and causes. Gone are the familiar articulations of instruments and vocal utterance: gone is the stability of note and interval: gone too is the reference of beat and metre. Composers also have problems: how to cut an aesthetic path and discover a stability in a wide-open sound world, how to develop appropriate sound-making methods, how to select technologies and software.
The world's language system is undergoing rapid change because of demographic trends, new technology, and international communication.
These changes will affect both written and spoken communication. English may not be the dominant language of the future, and
the need to be multilingual will be enhanced. Although many languages are going extinct, new ones are emerging in cities and
extended social groups.
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