This chapter studies Judith Weir’s The Voice of Desire (2003). Weir’s music is fresh, concise, and instantly recognizable, and it successfully assimilates, within a modern idiom, the elements of traditional music and storytelling which are integral to her artistic persona. The piece sets four poems concerning the ambivalent relationships between birds and humans. As may be expected, bird calls and sounds of nature are illustrated strikingly, especially in the piano part. The selected texts provide plenty of variety in mood and character: the first and third songs are the most substantial, and the last a sublimely simple strophic ‘jingle’ which has to be delivered with understated aplomb. The vocal tessitura stays in a rewarding medium range for the most part, taking advantage of natural resonances that can penetrate the texture with ease and adapt to timbral shadings according to context. Helpful pitch-cues, including unisons, are to be found frequently in the piano part. Although originally written for mezzo, it can also be performed effectively by a counter-tenor.
Animal linguistics: Exploring referentiality and compositionality in bird calls
