song and the sounds of poetry

Comments

• 11 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
• 1 Like

  Daphne Leong

  September 2014 @leongdSend leongd a private message.Vote Up1Vote Down

  Babbitt's Phonemena (an array of phonemes)

  Daphne
• Jason Yust

  September 2014 @jasonyustSend jasonyust a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

  Sorry if this is too obvious, but there are a lot of Ligeti pieces you might look at, such as Clocks and Clouds, Aventures, and the Nonsense Madrigals.
  
   

  --Jason Yust
  
   
• Adam Shanley

  September 2014 @quartertonalitySend quartertonality a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

  Hey Steve, I think Luciano Berio's "Circles" would work well for what you are looking for. 

  

  

  
  
• Stephen Rodgers

  September 2014 @feets3517Send feets3517 a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

  Many thanks, Jason and Adam! These are terrific examples--especially Ligeti's Nonsense Madrigals and Berio's Circles. I'm especially interested in cases where composers emphasize the "purely" sonic aspects of poems, whether subtly or drastically (i.e., alliteration, assonance, rhyme, other vowel and consonant effects, various patterns of sound repetition and variation). These two pieces fall on the drastic side of the spectrum, so they'll definitely come in handy.
• Bob Kosovsky

  September 2014 @kos2Send kos2 a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

  It may not be exactly what you were hoping for, but there are numerous passages in "Four Saints in Three Acts" where Thomson takes advantage of some scheme Stein has set up.  Some examples off the top of my had:

  
  
  • "Let Lily Lucy...."
  
  
  • "They might be very well"
  
  
  • "Begin to trace"
  
  

   
• Stephen Rodgers

  September 2014 @feets3517Send feets3517 a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

  Thanks, Bob. Great suggestion. Was hoping to include some Stein.
• Poundie Burstein

  September 2014 @PoundieSend Poundie a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

  There are works by Kaija Saariaho (such as Lohn) or by Swedish Text-Sound Composers that manipulate poetry electronically is such as way that seems to emphasize the sounds of the words, arguably more than the meaning. Luciano Berio's Sinfonia likewise is a work that has a text, but which seems to privilege the sound of the words.

  Poundie Burstein

  CUNY
• Stephen Rodgers

  September 2014 @feets3517Send feets3517 a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

  Thank you, Poundie--Lohn is mesmerizing, and it'll work great. 
• Carissa Reddick

  September 2014 @careddickSend careddick a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

  I don't know if you are interested in pop music examples, but a lot of the 90's band Soul Coughing's songs work this way, especially Super Bon Bon (especially about a minute and a half in). www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFyk5NKnWJA
• Anton Vishio

  September 2014 @antonvishioSend antonvishio a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

  You may already have in mind Paul Lanksy's Six Fantasies on a Poem of Thomas Campion; exploring the "spectrum" between speech and song, Lansky notes that "Each of the Fantasies attempts to musically transform a single reading by Hannah MacKay of a well-known poem by Thomas Campion and to musically highlight some aspect of her speech...explicating the implicit music within."  His notes for the CD re-release can be found at 

  http://paul.mycpanel.princeton.edu/liner_notes/fantasies.html.

  (Lansky's comments about Campion's own sensitivity to that "spectrum" and the soundworld of the poem - a "free-wheeling spin about the voice box" - are particularly striking.)
• Stephen Rodgers

  September 2014 @feets3517Send feets3517 a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

  Thanks, Carissa and Anton. I've had Soul Coughing and Lansky on repeat since getting your posts.