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
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