JONATHAN PITKIN (b. 1978)Feather-Small and Still (2010)

2021 ◽  
pp. 183-185
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Great Sensitivity ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Prize Competition ◽  
Nature Imagery ◽  
Classic Form ◽  
The Voice

This chapter addresses Jonathan Pitkin’s Feather-Small and Still (2010). Pitkin was commissioned to make a setting of this evocative poem by Sophie Stephenson-Wright, following its commendation in a prize competition for young poets. Its subject is that mysterious bird, the nightjar. The composer has succeeded admirably in capturing the text’s intriguing, distinctive flavour, responding to its nature imagery and heightened language with great sensitivity. Vocal lines are tellingly clear and simple, and it is left to the piano to amplify and illustrate the words to haunting effect, with solo passages bridging the gaps between vocal fragments, always colouring and enriching the sound world. The poem is a villanelle, a classic form in which repetitions of the first and third lines recur throughout. The composer has not adhered strictly to the format in his music, but, by subtle brush-strokes, he manages to preserve traces of reverberation, and his fluent, cohesive musical style enables him to expand and contract textures, often leading off into fresh territory. Though tightly constructed, the piece flows naturally and should prove enjoyable to perform. The voice part is especially suitable for a young singer, and not at all taxing.

CHARLOTTE BRAY (b. 1982)Sonnets and Love Songs (2011)

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-19
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Technical Skill ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Fernando Pessoa ◽  
The Voice

This chapter assesses British composer Charlotte Bray’s Sonnets and Love Songs (2011). Bray’s musical style is cohesive, fluent, and evocative, with a strong harmonic sense and tonalities occasionally reminiscent of the English Romantics, albeit with a modernist ‘take’. The texts are by the distinguished Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who revered Shakespeare as his model. They concern complex philosophical issues and dilemmas of life and love—three of the poems are actual sonnets. The composer has assembled her selection to describe a clear trajectory: from musings on innocence, through turbulence, to eventual liberation—an ambitious, bold concept, achieved with assurance. There is no getting away from the fact that the cycle demands a singer of exceptional accomplishment—the wide compass might indicate a bass-baritone, but the upper range is exploited mercilessly. Indeed, notes frequently have be held high in the voice, and many end with diminuendos, requiring technical skill in travelling through register changes.

LYELL CRESSWELL (b. 1944)Eight Shaker Songs (1985)

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-71
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Musical Style ◽  
Charles Ives ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Voice

This chapter introduces works by Lyell Cresswell. His use of the voice as showcased in this chapter is highly imaginative and often demanding. The refreshingly uninhibited musical style defies easy categorization, but displays signs of an iconoclasm developed by Charles Ives. Cresswell achieves its effect by relatively simple means, including repetition. All the songs are brief yet sharply contrasted, and they convey a heady religious fervour that carries all before it. The third perhaps requires the most vocal virtuosity, and the sixth needs considerable stamina to bring it off, especially in some crucially loud spoken (shouted) passages. The final movement is a test of quick rhythmic articulation. The piano’s contribution is brimming with energy and drama, responding and adapting adroitly to the texts’ changing moods.

Yma Sumac: The Extraordinary Peruvian Singer and Her Paradoxical Career

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoila S. Mendoza
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Artistic Career ◽  
The Voice

Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo (1922–2008), best known by her artistic name, Yma Sumac, startled the world with her unique voice, beauty, and exotic persona. The Peruvian singer became a legend and an icon, while her life and career were filled with controversy and paradox in and outside of her native country. She first emerged as an acclaimed folk singer in the midst of the development of Peruvian national identity in the early 1940s and soon became recognized for her folk art in Latin America. By the end of the decade and as part of a trio directed by her manager and husband, Moisés Vivanco, she started a career in the United States that would lead to radical changes in her musical style and to the creation of a series of fantasies about her origins and identity. A prodigious live performer, she traveled around the world tirelessly, her recordings reached far and wide, and her first album, The Voice of Xtabay, has never been out of print. Yma Sumac participated in two major Hollywood films in the 1950s, and in 1960 her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was unveiled. In 2016 Sumac was posthumously honored with a Google Doodle. One of the most internationally known Peruvians, she had a problematic relationship with her own country, but fortunately, two years before her death, she was properly honored and recognized by her native country. She had a long artistic career, performing into the 1990s, but her fame reached its peak in the 1950s when she became known as the “Queen of Exotica,” performing a style of music popular in the United States after World War II.

ERIC NATHAN (b. 1983)Forever Is Composed of Nows (2011)

2021 ◽  
pp. 165-167
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Musical Style ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Less Is More ◽  
French Music ◽  
American Composer ◽  
The Voice

This chapter discusses American composer Eric Nathan’s Forever Is Composed of Nows (2011). This hauntingly lovely setting is simple enough to be tackled by beginners, but all singers will find it a rewarding vehicle. Nathan demonstrates conclusively that ‘less is more’. With admirable economy of language and structure, he captures and matches the pith and essence of the succinct texts with unerring musicality, so that every phrase tells. The voice is given every chance to hone each fragment to perfection, monitoring every morsel of sound, paying close attention to colour, nuance, and subtly graded dynamics. The musical style, a fluent and intuitive fusion of past and present, is reminiscent of late romanticism, evoking in particular the rarefied atmosphere of French music.

The Virtual World of Cerberus

2011 ◽  
pp. 158-166
Author(s):  
Jocelyne Kiss ◽  
Sidi Soueina ◽  
Martin Laliberté ◽  
Adel Elmaghraby
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Spike Timing ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Learning Capacity ◽  
Learning Machines ◽  
Learning Rules ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Autonomous Evolution

While exploring autonomous evolution concepts for virtual worlds, we will present a new design Cerberus an avatar singer who can accompany a singer, perform alone and make his song evolves using simple past events. This 3D interactive facial animated avatar was made thanks to virtools software. The main originality of Cerberus is to develop his own melody by using learning machines and constantly improve his musical style and emotions. Cerberus is implemented using competitive learning rules to trained artificial neural networks in order to perform these self-improvements. Self-improvements is a key of our learning capacity, The challenge of building a virtual singer that could promotes his own improvisation is an open research field (Minsky, 2000).We will expose the difficulties of the synchronization in real-time between the voice and animation to generate the right emotion, also the difficulties of establishing a classification which could be in contradiction with the ontology of the musical fact. Also we will expose the necessity of developing avatars that use the amazing potentialities of spike-timing-dependent plasticity concept (Abraham, & Bear, 1996), that hence metaplasticity. This powerful concept enhance the potentiality of avatar design and give the impression that the avatar has a memory and simulate “feelings” linked to a context.

Public School Voice Clinics, Part I

1984 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-57
Author(s):  
Sandra Q. Miller ◽  
Charles L. Madison
Keyword(s):  
Public School ◽  
School District ◽  
Voice Disorders ◽  
Urban School ◽  
Urban School District ◽  
Local School District ◽  
Local School ◽  
Perceived Need ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Voice Problem

The purpose of this article is to show how one urban school district dealt with a perceived need to improve its effectiveness in diagnosing and treating voice disorders. The local school district established semiannual voice clinics. Students aged 5-18 were referred, screened, and selected for the clinics if they appeared to have a chronic voice problem. The specific procedures used in setting up the voice clinics and the subsequent changes made over a 10-year period are presented.

Hormone Replacement Therapy and Voice

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-614
Author(s):  
Jean Abitbol
Keyword(s):  
Replacement Therapy ◽  
Symptom Severity ◽  
Low Dose ◽  
Hormone Replacement ◽  
Clinical Signs ◽  
Female Voice ◽  
Fat Cells ◽  
High Pitch ◽  
Endocrine Effects ◽  
The Voice

The purpose of this article is to update the management of the treatment of the female voice at perimenopause and menopause. Voice and hormones—these are 2 words that clash, meet, and harmonize. If we are to solve this inquiry, we shall inevitably have to understand the hormones, their impact, and the scars of time. The endocrine effects on laryngeal structures are numerous: The actions of estrogens and progesterone produce modification of glandular secretions. Low dose of androgens are secreted principally by the adrenal cortex, but they are also secreted by the ovaries. Their effect may increase the low pitch and decease the high pitch of the voice at menopause due to important diminution of estrogens and the privation of progesterone. The menopausal voice syndrome presents clinical signs, which we will describe. I consider menopausal patients to fit into 2 broad types: the “Modigliani” types, rather thin and slender with little adipose tissue, and the “Rubens” types, with a rounded figure with more fat cells. Androgen derivatives are transformed to estrogens in fat cells. Hormonal replacement therapy should be carefully considered in the context of premenopausal symptom severity as alternative medicine. Hippocrates: “Your diet is your first medicine.”

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document