Skip to main content

Meredith Monk – Songs of Ascension

 

She uses her voice as an instrument and sees the human voice as the first instrument for the deepest level of connections and feelings that people have no words to explain. That is what she hopes to convey through her music.

In the piece "Songs of Ascension," she is accompanied at first by violins and, I believe, accordions. When they all use their voices as instruments, the singing sounds like an opera at times and like a choir at others. Because of the instruments used, all four pieces are very close to classical music.

She uses the piano to accompany her singing in Gotham Lullaby. She begins with very pleasant quiet tones and actually introduces the piece with the three-line "When a song...". That's what I heard before it changed to the tones she produced with her voice. Throughout the piece, the piano plays the same melody. As a result, she primarily uses her voice to express her emotions and mood. The piece begins harmonically and becomes restless in the middle section. She concludes the piece with the piano as her sole accompaniment.

The way she makes music or uses her voice instead of instruments may be stamped as simple for many reasons, with the various "lalala" sounds and other other similar sounds. However, she goes far beyond that and lets the listener partially immerse into her music and into another world of music making. Which is why, according to her own statement in the documentary, she is not understood by many, because not all listeners perceive her way of making music as music. She uses exactly this instrument - the human voice - with which music making actually began before there was any kind of instrument.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

William Basinski – The Disintegration Loops III

  The Disintegration Loops is a quartet of albums published in 2002 and 2003 by American avant-garde composer William Basinski. The pieces are made up of tape loop recordings that were played over time, with noise and crackles rising as the tape deteriorated. Basinski noticed this effect when attempting to convert his older recordings to digital format. The completion of the recordings coincided with the September 11, 2001 events, which Basinski witnessed and adds a deeper meaning to the composition. The composition is fascinating in many ways and makes the listener lose track of time. The tape loop recording had a very calming effect on me and put me in a trance-like state when I listened to it in its entirety. The tape loop is really soothing, so much so that I didn't even notice the loss of quality when I first listened to it. It makes you forget about time and allows you to really get into the piece capturing the calmness it exudes. You forget or don't really notice how i
Post a Comment
Read more

Alvin Lucier’s Nothing is Real

Reem Zedan 7711552 Prof. Dr. Bernd Herzogenrath The Future of [American] Music 02 February 2022   Alvin Lucier ’s Nothing is Real             In the beginning of the video, Lucier is seen recording and playing the piano. At first I thought he was playing snippets of different classical music, but later realized it was the melody of ”Strawberry Fields Forever” by The Beatles. The pop song is played in segments that are connected by frequent long pauses. These pauses emphasize sections of the melody and change the dynamic of the song. The sections end up having their own identity and become separated from their collective identity, which is the song. Another aspect to be noticed is the frequent use of the piano’s foot pedals to create a reverb sound effect. After playing the segments, Lucier utilizes a teapot for further production of unique sounds. He views the teapot as a room and the lid as its rooftop, moving the lid changes the quality of the sounds and provides the li
Post a Comment
Read more

John Cage’s “4’33” (1952)

  In his, I would say quite or even (pun alert) quiet experimental piece, “4’33,” Cage observes the ostensible absence of sound. Here, music is made out of those interesting background noises. Therefore, this piece of art has some performative aspects. Cage’s conception of silence would be that there is not actually such a thing as silence. He would argue that if there is sound, it means there is life.             As I am listening to this piece in class, I can only imagine how some people in the audience must have felt if they did not know what is going on. Especially, if they were some self-proclaimed music experts listening to basically nothing, at least on the exterior. Obviously, on an interior level of interpretation, this piece is all about what is happening in that single moment or ongoing for those 4’33 minutes. Cage is here quite a sneaky link shedding light on the small and everyday sounds with such an absurd and honestly also funny approach to music and life. The bizarre
Post a Comment
Read more