Ellen Aagaard: Telling Non-Existing Stories
Performer identity and dramaturgy in non-narrative vocal expressions in contemporary music
In parts of new vocal music there are few or no understandable words. How does this presumably non-narrative intention affect the making of a concert consisting of such works? Could the lack of linguistically understandable content open up new possibilities in developing a coherent stage performance? What do I as an interpreter convey when the text has no story in conventional terms? Who am I when there is no obvious identity to find in the text?
The project’s ultimate artistic aim is to create a stage performance where the chosen musical pieces form a united artistic expression, based on each piece’s internal dramaturgy and performer identity.
Vocal expressions in contemporary music stretch from the linguistically meaningful to the utterly instrumental, from traditional sound production to mere sound effects based on profoundly different voice techniques, where the music may be perceived to crossing genres. This project deals with the latter, what I chose to call the radical part of contemporary music. The term radical here describes new vocal works that differ in their use of vocal techniques and expressions from contemporary music with a sound more similar to older classical music. The music in question may be based on text which has been transformed beyond recognition, or the composer strives after mere sounds without linguistic basic. Hear Luciano Berio´s “Sequenza III” which contains it all: understandable words, sounds based on the words and sounds without any link to the text.
Having performed the more radical contemporary vocal music for several years, my experience is that even without understandable words, the human voice often conveys a content that may be perceived as a kind of story. In this project the term story in connection with non-narrative vocal works, is defined as musical and dramaturgical courses perceived as abstract, non-musical content. My use of the term non-narrative is meant as a description of expressions without meaning in linguistic sense of the word, and not to rule out the music’s possibility of conveying “stories” as defined above.
I believe that this kind of vocal music often might be intended to be non-narrative, or instrumental to a degree that it comes close to being absolute music. In his book “The Idea of Absolute Music” (University of Chicago Press, 1989), dealing with 18th and 19th century discussion on instrumental music, Carl Dahlhaus gives this description: “The idea of “absolute music” (…) consists of the conviction that instrumental music purely and clearly expresses the true nature of music by its very lack of concept, object and purpose.” This opposed to “program music”, which was determined by poems or other texts, a written program, opera plots or obvious imitations of nature sounds.
It is my belief, however, that vocal music easily conveys abstract and/or imagined stories, and that the human voice has a hard time “saying nothing”. This is a premise for this project. There are three important reasons for this opinion:
- We associate vocal sounds with everyday communication, and expect the voice to communicate something to be understood
- Radical vocal music often includes or consists of sounds with linguistic structure. (“Structure” is in this project defined simply as how things are built and compound.) Some composers even construct words so that the singer obviously performs language. Hear Gerhard Stäbler´s “Belfast Breakfast Songs” or Sergej Newski´s “Pesnya”, and find sounds so close to human language and yet with no meaning in linguistic sense.
- The singer has no external instrument, only the body to deliver her message or music. This increases the personal and communicative qualities.
The latter is also an important element in the identity issue. Singers identity on stage is deeply rooted in the text conveyed or the (opera/theater) part played. When this text or part is missing, we might think that the singer gets the identity of any other instrumentalist, but I don’t think this is necessarily true. Given my thoughts on what the voice might relate are appropriate, the singer identity might stand in between the story-teller and the instrumentalist.
These are the basis of my desires to generate consciousness on the dramaturgical elements and identity building in vocal music without linguistically meaningful stories, and the opportunity this might give to creating new performance concepts.
Performance concepts in the classical music field is in my opinion in need of renewal, as they often still have a touch of ritualism, or even of being left to chance. This goes both for scenic dramaturgy such as presence on stage (e.g. performers walk on and off stage for every piece they perform, or the singer always stands in the same position by the piano) and musical dramaturgy. Concerning the latter we largely seem to perform music we simply like or that displays us in a favorable way. To the degree singers consciously build concert concepts, textual content is a frequently applied tool. We create the concert as kind of a superstructure or “story of stories” where the texts are connected or contrasted. If we have no text and want to create dramaturgically good performances, both selecting works and setting them in a certain order must be justified otherwise. The larger story must exist in a musical and not linguistic sense.
In this project the term dramaturgy will be divided in musical and scenic dramaturgy. The first deals with how the musical course is built in each of the pieces. The parameters contributing to this progression might be vocal sounds and how they are compound, dynamics, voice register/pitch progressions, general form, etc. The latter comprises the scenic performance of both each work and the stage performance as a whole.