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Listening Report on Meredith Monk’s Ascent

 Sarah Kumar

Dr. Bernd Herzogenrath

The Future of (American) Music

05 Mar. 2023

Listening Report on Meredith Monk’s Ascent

            Meredith Monk’s song Ascent features string instruments and her own voice and voices of other people as an instrument. What she is singing does not have meaning as is usually imbedded in words sung. Her voice serves as an instrument together with the strings and the choir. For music to be regarded as music, it is usually expected of the sounds to have meaning. The voice, which next to instruments produces sound, is seen as the universal carrier of meaning in that through words we understand what the song is about, why it is sung, and what it wants to say. In her song Ascension, however, the sounds of the voices do not carry such meaning. The letters and syllables are randomly formed sounds, which in some language may hold meaning but if so, only through pure coincidence.

            The high pitched sound Monk emits through her voice reminds me of a percussion instrument in its rhythm. The strings produce the melody which mostly stays constant during the song, while the voices change pitch and rhythm seemingly at random. The voices are in themselves instruments to the song, and even if devoid of meaning, add texture to it. This leaves room to interpret the song in whichever way one might like, as opposed to songs with straightforward lyrics. This song also reminds me a bit of Björk’s music which, while I have not listened to a lot of it, similarly obfuscates the direct meaning of her songs with lyrics that are hard to make sense of at first.

            The title of the song Ascent in my opinion already gives an idea of what the song is about or rather, what it might be about. The sound is almost meditative and has a sublime feel to it. I would associate it to something related to heaven but not in a religious sense, though it does remind me a bit of the organ in church settings. The sound of the song feels like ascending to a higher place due to the high pitches of Monk’s voice and especially near the end of the song where it picks up in pace. The picture it evokes in my mind is that of walking up stairs. In this way, the voices in the song, although singing sounds devoid of meaning, can leave it up to the listener to interpret the song however they like. And while that is one possibility, there is also another possibility of not interpreting the song as anything at all and just listening to and enjoying the sounds as they are because not everything has to have meaning behind it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Herzogenrath, Bernd. Ascent. Google Drive – Reader FUTURE OF MUSIC, 14 Dec. 2023, https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Wj1sqQh8Nnh8e5TXnQq9_Y85vuuSydfT?usp=sharing. Accessed 5 Mar. 2023. 
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