On the Nature of Thingness (2011)
Instrumentation: Soprano and 10 instruments
Electronics: No
Duration: 21'
Text: by Zbigniew Herbert, Hugo Ball, Artur Rimbaud, and Italo Calvino
Commissioned as part of ICElab.
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Notes: A work in four movements for soprano and ensemble, On the Nature of Thingness is guided by its texts, each offering a different perspective on the object, the thing, the word, or the context. “The Study of the Object” by Zbigniew Herbert is set untranslated in its onomatopoeic Polish. A post-modern still-life, the poem describes all that the object is not, commands its removal, and describes with intense detachment the sanctity of the vacuum thereby created. “DADA” combines two texts by Hugo Ball - the sound-poem “Gadji beri bimba” and his “Dada Manifesto”. The Manifesto begins as a call to action to let words be themselves instead of the associations piled upon them, and then itself dissolves into sound poetry. This recitation is accompanied by a chorus of jaw harps, imitating the vowels and consonants of the text. “Vowels” spins its sparse stasis as a blank slate for the first two lines of Rimbaud's "Voyelles", incanted on a single pitch to isolate the colors attributed to each vowel by the poet, while the vocal color and orchestration slowly shift. “An outside with in inside in it” is meditation of doing, that grows from the conscious acts of making and hearing sounds. The line is from the short story “At Daybreak” by Italo Calvino, and its simplicity and wonder is a koan for this activity.