It is a very specific thing and I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't find substantial leads.
Anyway, I am trying to "scout the field" on a topic such as non-verbal vocal music, possibly connected to musical theater and extended vocal techniques (so not just classical operatic technique). Do you know any authors who have dedicated themselves to writing operas, oratorios, cantatas, mixed forms of vocal theater WITHOUT text or with large parts of vocalises?
From my tiny preliminary research, the most interesting things have been done by Meredith Monk (Atlas is an entire opera without a libretto, as far as I know), Glass (Einstein on the beach is a must), Peter Maxwell Davies (his "Eight songs for a mad king" should be a monodrama, so a staging, and the text is almost an excuse to show off absurd vocal sounds) and Sciarrino (in Lohengrin, which is a kind of monologue, the words become ambient sounds).
I am missing other parts of the repertoire... I don't know Henze or Bussotti well, for example... any ideas?
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Tiger
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Reply 2 by Tiger
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A preliminary question. Is electronic music excluded?
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Annuccia
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Reply 3 by Annuccia
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In Kodaly's Missa Brevis there is an Introitus without text, added later but I don't know if there are vocalizations though
HA
Historical author
Reply 4 by Historical author
...and something exotic?
... I was struggling with India
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Ludovica
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Reply 5 by Ludovica
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One field could be film music, how many scenes are accompanied by choirs that just vocalize.
in theory, electronic music would not be excluded... in fact, at this stage I would be very curious to get to know that field better as well, and by that field I mean musical theater that uses electronics even in processing the voice.
@Annuccia
but it isn't theater...
@Jack
it would be interesting to understand if some contemporary composers have used that type of vocalization in a musical theater. I should actually ask Riccardo Nova...
@Ludovica
fascinating and problematic at the same time, alas... this question I asked you could become the basis for research that I would like to use to enter a PhD program. Every step will become increasingly narrower, therefore, and radically methodologized. Alas, film music has very particular problems; it could be a starting point for some things and a deviation for others. I often think about Morricone's use of female vocalization, and I think it is spectacular. Tarantino also adopts it, more or less, but it is one of those things that would be worth treating on its own. In my preliminary idea, research on non-verbal extended vocals in musical theater would only make sense if one manages to find the mechanisms through which the voice affects the dramaturgy, even without text. Sciarrino, Glass, and Monk are perfect, in this sense, because there is research of exactly this type. The soundtrack would be too different, inhomogeneous. The best thing at this point (for me) would be to find something truly strange, revolutionary. I trust I will find it sooner or later
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Xenakis
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Reply 7 by Xenakis
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287
thallo wrote:
@Tiger
in theory, electronic music would not be excluded... in fact, at this stage, I would be very curious to get to know that field better as well, and by that field I mean musical theater that makes use of electronics even in processing the voice.
Could this text be useful:
LUCIANO BERIO, Interview on music, edited by Rossana Dalmonte, Rome, GLF editori Laterza, 2007.
Demetrio Stratos comes to mind, but also a friend who years ago told me about a singing teacher from Darmstadt, if I remember correctly, claiming that with the voice one could do anything, to the point of making electronic music useless (a provocation to discuss...)
in theory, electronic music would not be excluded... in fact, at this stage I would be very curious to get to know that field better as well, and by that field I mean musical theater that uses electronics even in processing the voice.
You should look into "Unreported inbound Palermo" by Melchiorre Alessandro
