Acousmatrix 7

by Thom JurekMost followers of electro-acoustic music recognize the contributions both Bruno Maderna and Luciano Berio have made to the field, mainly due to their collaborative work Ritratto di Citta, which established the Studio de Fonologia in 1955. Fewer, however, are familiar with their individual projects from the late '50s and early '60s that clearly set them apart from their counterparts in Cologne. Berio and Maderna were both obsessed by the human voice as a basis and endpoint in electro-acoustic music. Consequently, many of their works from this period (1957-1964) are voice-centered. Of Berio's three contributions, his Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) is the most memorable. A series of clipped and found sounds are registered as a backdrop against a female vocalist multi-tracked on tape reading and accentuating from the 11th chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses. Words come up from the ether in English, Italian, and French, inserting themselves into one another, causing one another to erupt with new meaning and sonic resonance as they collude, combine, and resist their electronic counterparts. Visage, composed as the soundtrack to a radio drama that never came to pass, is the longest and most disturbing work, as it showcases the human voice in all kinds of extreme situations plied out of tape manipulations and reinserted into a matrix of other sounds. Vast emotional and physical soundscapes are charted and deconstructed, mapping a virtual psychic terrain of human expression as it transcends the limits of the body. Maderna's two works, La Rire and Invenzione su una Voce, are both extremes of the splicing technique. The voice and the taped sounds are so distorted, removed from their center of gravity and context, that they become merely sonic elements in a collage of rhythm, sound, and dynamic. Indeed, the scratching technique used by DJs today was used to extreme -- but like -- example in 1960. The final piece is for sonic environments and human voice. Rather than the voice being cut up by splicing, it has a single mood (laughter) that is reinvented via tape speed contoured by rounded electronic sounds. While many may view these works as merely quaint today, they still have plenty about them that is shocking and even disturbing, because of their foreignness in our (societal) perception of everyday life. Yet, strange as it may be, they are nothing more than the sounds of everyday life itself being manipulated by outer forces -- does that sound familiar?