Presenter: Alexander Bean
Mentor: Robert Kyr, School of Music
Creative Work Presentation: C3 (Oak Room)
Major: Music Composition and Organ Performance
Traditional Western vocal music, especially in the art song music of the 19th century, text is of primary importance to the meaning of the work. This approach to vocal music obscures the physical generation of speech sounds, as well as their interaction with the acoustics of the space in which they are being produced. In my song for solo voice, space and breath, I take the opposite approach, composing physical speech sounds that have no semantic meaning. I accomplish this objective by composing pure sound without text, and instead, I transcribe exact phonemes using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The performer is given a particular set of resonant frequencies (those pitches which sound the clearest in a particular room) in order to control the interactions between the phonemes and the performance space. In my presentation, I will discuss the International Phonetic Alphabet as a means of notating the range of speech sounds that humans can produce. Moreover, I will explain how I organize these sounds, which I use to shape the dramatic arc of the piece. Finally, I will perform my work, and make some final comments about the structure of the piece.