Anthology of Music for Voice and Percussion: late 20th-Century and Beyond
Barbara Kolb Looking for Claudio 1987
Barbra Kolb is an American composer influenced by the literary and visual arts. She was famous for using atonal “tape” music back in the 1970’. “Her music uses sound masses and often creates vertical structures through simultaneous rhythmic or melodic units. Barbara’s musical style can be identified by its colourful textures, impressionistic touch, and atonal vocabulary, with influences arising from literature and fine art. She was the first American female composer to win the Rome prize. She received B. M. and M. M. degrees from the Hartt College of music at the University of Hartford, and studied with Arnold Franchetti, Lukas FOSS, and Gunther Schuller.”https://amp.en.google-info.cn/2637271/1/barbara-kolb.html
Looking for Claudio’s score is included in the youtube video. It caught my attention because she wrote this for tape and guitar but uses bells and mandolin in the ensemble group. The reason this is so interesting to me is that when you listen to the music at around 8:47…
…the guitar and mandolin take on a percussive role with a staccato-like texture and the humming voices take on the role of the instruments with sustained and legato-like lines. Not many pieces can sound percussive without the percussion instruments to back them up. There are no lyrics so To me, it’s not clear what the message is, but it’s haunting. There are many sustanati in the vocal lines which makes me think that Kolb was going for a minimalist approach, although she is known for her tape music, not a minimalist style. There are also many echoed motifs between the voice and guitar parts with a note in the guitar line saying “balance with voice.” Perhaps the vocal line is more important! As the piece goes on the vocal lines are the driving force and get more complicated. At around 10:10 they begin to echo each other with more intensity while the accompaniment stays roughly the same. By the end all we hear are the voices and then the ringing of “spellbinding” and “windblown” church bells tapering off into the distance.
I really liked how particular she is about her piece(s). She gives notes through the whole score and makes it pretty clear what she intended. She even explains where she got specific motifs for “Claudio”.
Susan Parenti’s Exercise for Hands Right, Left and Deserted Mouth 1987
One of the most interesting pieces that I have found is a percussion piece that uses speech and only a little bit of singing written by Susan Parenti in 1987. Although I would still consider this a vocal piece, it just depends on your definition of “vocal.”
Dr. Whiting, a professor at the University of Washington, performed this experimental piece this last March 2021 and had a few more things to say in her programs notes about what the purpose of the music is:
“Susan Parenti’s Exercise for Hands Right, Left and Deserted Mouth (1987) explores percussive sound as an imitation of and a stand-in for the human voice. Initially conceived as a work for a percussionist and an actor (usually Parenti herself)….In the end, it examines what we try to do as we communicate through language, exploring what is lost and what might be beneath the surface of our words.”
There seems to be a storyline although Parenti’s lyrics are a bit scattered. But that seems to go along with the percussiveness of this piece beautifully. When she is “speaking to herself” over the phone at the beginning of the piece, she cuts herself off mid-sentence to bang on the drums. Then during the embedded link below, she vocalizes a few sustained notes and then a melodic line. It isn’t supposed to be pretty, at least that’s how I interpreted it. The character might be making the sustained vocalized noises out of frustration at first and then it turns into playful and almost satirical longer sustained notes.
I would definitely consider this an “Avant-Garde” piece. Many poets put their work to music but with just speech. Parenti actual experiments with all the noises you could possibly make with your voice AND with percussion instruments. Maybe it is experimental as well! Would you consider this a “gimmick” though? I’m not sure how sincere it is! I don’t like to think that any composers who publish their work are making music for anything other than creative and artistic expression. Many consider John Cage's music to be gimmicky, yet he took it very seriously. Does it depend on the composer or the audience to make that decision? I would qualify the intent behind the piece before I called it a gimmick, but what if we never know the context? Maybe that’s the whole point of these things too. We are supposed to make up our own minds and decide whether it’s actually artistic or not.
Beatboxing & Doug E. Fresh 1986 & a Study in 2013
A modern-day example of percussion and vocal music would be beatboxing! This has only been a technique used in the last 35 years. An article was written in The Journal of Voice by Andrew Sapthavee, Paul Yi and Steven Sims entitled: Functional Endoscopic Analysis of Beatbox Performers. They describe the 1980’s phenomenon or “Avante-Garde” technique as follows:
“Beatboxing is a form of vocal percussion in which performers imitate drum sounds, interspersed with vocalization and other sounds, using their vocal tracts. Although similarities between beatboxing and singing are expected because of the anatomy involved, the medical literature has a wealth of information on singing and minimal studies on beatboxing. The objective of our study was to report on a case series of functional endoscopic evaluation of the anatomy involved in beatboxing and determine whether beatboxing may be a risk factor for phonotrauma or if this form of vocalization might be protective of the vocal folds.”
The first performer to be credited with beatboxing and bringing it to the forefront of hip hop music in the 20th century is an artist named Doug E. Fresh. After beginning a solo career he formed the band The Get Fresh Crew, releasing their first album in 1986. “It was Doug’s beatboxing skills that would later inspire world-renowned beatboxers such as Rahzel, Reeps One & Reggie Watts. Utilizing only his mouth and vocal cords, Doug E. Fresh was able to replicate the original drum loops that were made using the legendary Roland TR-808 drum machine. The term beatboxing derived from the fact that the original drum machines from the likes of Roland were commonly referred to as “beatboxes” on the hip hop scene.” -https://www.80scasualclassics.co.uk/blog/doug-e-fresh-the-get-fresh-crew/
In the clip, Doug demonstrates a simple beatbox to their first album hit but demonstrates the vocal cords' ability to sound like a drum beat. The article discusses how these sounds are made anatomically: “Additionally, most sounds produced by spoken language and singing are exhaled sounds. However, beatboxing incorporates inhaled sounds which likely serves at least two main purposes — the first of which allows for the performer to complete respiratory cycles without interrupting the continuity of a sequence of beats, and the second which produces sounds not executable by exhalation.” This basically means that like singing, the beatbox technique uses the whole vocal tract. Pretty fascinating considering that the exact same muscles can produce such different sounds.
This study was done in 2013, while Doug E. Fresh’s music came out in 1986.
https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/science/article/pii/S0892199713002439
https://youtu.be/UfSonfmtKsM -Link to the whole song.
The Roaring Wind by Matt Barber (Percussion ensemble 4+ and voice) 2011
Matt Barber composed a piece called The Roaring Wind with a 4+Percussion ensemble and voice part in 2011. In his program notes, he states. “‘To The Roaring Wind’ is a song cycle on four poems from the collection Harmonium by the great American poet Wallace Stevens (1879–1955). Not only is his poetry deeply moving and intricately meaningful, but as with most of Stevens’s poetry, a simple recitation of these poems could qualify as a musical performance due to his care with the rhythm and sonic qualities of the words he chooses. This presented quite a challenge to me as a composer, since my effort was to compose music that brings extra meaning and musical qualities to poetry that is already utterly meaningful and musical without doing damage to it. These particular poems are related in their use of wind as an image or a symbol, but more importantly they all in some way deal with the very American conflict between individuality and society, and in what ways art should be a part of life in the New World.”
Above, I have highlighted the third movement called Valley Candle. What I find interesting is not only is the vocal part accompanied by various percussion instruments but they use cowbells and junk metal instruments to create certain noises. Is that in reference to the poem and what Barber says is about the American conflict between individualism and society? Perhaps the different instruments are the different sorts of people that we find involved in the arts, which in my opinion make art much more interesting because of their different perspectives…perhaps that’s what he is doing here. Like at the beginning of the B section at 5:05, there is the sound of a paper bag popping that is supposed to be hidden from the audience and then there are a cowbell and “metal” instruments used, almost eclectic…perhaps like the many artistic people in the world?! I also found the voice part interesting. Her lines are completely melismatic. That makes me think that even though she is singing the poem, she also represents the wind that is talked about. So in a way, it’s kind of like text painting. None of this is particularly new, but I found that adding elements of everyday objects like John Cage and the fact that the percussion instruments can’t/don't really play the same notes as the vocal line… it’s almost atonal and definitely experimental. And for some reason, it doesn’t sound unpleasant.
Cobalt Blue (marimba and soprano) by Ney Rosauro
This piece was written in 2013, with lyrics by Keiko Abe. There are a few very interesting elements to this song including the use of atonality. What makes this interesting is the fact that the tonal center seems to disappear, but when you take a look at the music, they are both in the same key …or if it’s not a key they are in, they have the same notes with a few exceptions.
The marimba and voice part is playing off of each other. Voice line sings the b-natural then a split second later the marimba does, the marimba plays an f-sharp then directly after the soprano sings it. I also thought that the consistency of the rhythmic values was interesting here. I mention these things only because I think it gives us the context of the lyrics. Cobalt Blue, the color, is in reference to the sea color. And instead of using a piano to depict the ocean, he used marimba. Why is that? More than likely because the lyricist is a marimba player herself but I’d like to think it’s another indicator of the contextual elements. Perhaps he used marimba because of the loudness and fluid yet percussive technique. In the clip, the marimba drowns out the vocal line at times much like the ocean drowns out noise so you hear nothing else. Crashing waves could be our dissonant and accidental notes but the consistency of the rhythmic values is like the ever consistent wave of the sea.
On Rosauro’s website, he has some program notes about this song that I loved. “From previous contact with marimba virtuoso Keiko Abe I discovered a beautiful poem from her that described a journey to a world of cobalt blues. I was touched by this text and start singing a melody that was at one point related to a blue note. Keiko suggested that the use of a soprano voice to sing this melody and the result was this beautiful song for marimba and voice. The music was written in Florianopolis, Brazil (where the ocean meets the sky) and it reflects well this world of cobalt blues that Keiko described in her text.” -http://www.neyrosauro.com/works/a-song-cobalt-blue/
I also really loved the beginning of this piece. It’s like the marimba is setting up the ocean scene, again with the consistent rhythmic patterns. It seems calm and serene at first and then you begin to notice the business and loudness when the soprano “life” comes in with her accidentals and sustained notes and quicker tempos later on. There’s always something more to look at and listen to.
