Gender and Sexual Identities in Barry Truax's Song of Songs

The Macropolitics of Microsound: Gender and sexual identities in Barry Truax’s Song of Songs

DANIELLE SOFER

Department of Music, Room 115 Logic House, Maynooth University, Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland Email: [email protected]

This analysis explores how Barry Truax’s Song of Songs 2001, 2008, 2012), a more accurate description of how (1992) for oboe d’amore, English horn and two digital his homoerotic compositions fit into the socio-historical soundtracks reorients prevailing norms of sexuality by playing context in which they are situated (Truax 2003). with musical associations and aural conventions of how gender Whereas soundscape composition often maintains the sounds. The work sets the erotic dialogue between King recognisability of a sound’s source so as to refer to the Solomon and Shulamite from the biblical Song of Solomon real world, many of Truax’s context-based compositions text. On the soundtracks we hear a Christian monk’s song, environmental sounds (birds, cicadas and bells), and two begin by introducing referential sounds like the voice or speakers who recite the biblical text in its entirety preserving the environmental sounds of animals and insects only to the gendered pronouns of the original. By attending to modify these sounds gradually with digital processing. In established gender norms, Truax confirms the identity of each this way, the composer encourages his listeners to relate speaker, such that the speakers seemingly address one another recognisable sources to heavily processed and often as a duet, but the woman also addresses a female lover and the unrecognisable results; in short, inexperienced listeners man a male. These gender categories are then progressively need to learn to listen acousmatically (Truax 1994a: 186; blurred with granular time-stretching and harmonisation 2000: 125). Truax explained this compositional orienta- (which transform the timbre of the voices), techniques that, tion in the Call for Submissions to this issue: ‘Akey together, resituate the presumed heteronormative text within distinguishing feature of context-based composition a diverse constellation of possible sexual orientations. appears to be that real-world contexts inform the design and composition of aurally based work at every level, that is, in the materials, their organisation, and ulti- 1. INTRODUCTION mately the work’s placement within cultural contexts’. Almost thirty years ago, Canadian composer Barry Thus sound itself becomes entrenched, and, indeed, Truax (b. 1947) explained how significantly granular drenched with context at every register, engaging not just synthesis had informed his approach to musical com- with contexts extrinsic to the work, but insisting and position. Despite concerning itself with ‘the seemingly relying on trans-contextual knowledge. ‘Perhaps most trivial grain’, granular synthesis not only changed how significantly’,readsTruax’s Call for Submissions, he conceived of the greater processes of musical ‘listeners are encouraged to bring their knowledge of real composition, but also changed the way he thought of world contexts into their participation with these works.’ music and its larger social and historical function In context-based composition, musical structure is (1990: 123, 132). The practice, as it turns out, concerns defined by parameters that extend beyond the ‘purely’ the musically global as much as the minute, ‘[it] clearly formal to such structuring parameters as gender and juxtaposes the micro and macro levels, as the richness sexuality, for instance, if one looks to Barry Truax’s of the latter lies in stark contrast to the insignificance of many compositions. the former’ (ibid.: 123). Musical relationships forming Truax’s Song of Songs (1992) for oboe d’amore, the ‘inner complexity’ of the work, he says, are neces- English horn and two digital soundtracks is one 1 sarily shaped by ‘their possible relationships to the example of context-based composition. More specifi- environment or society at large’ (Truax 2012), what he cally, it is a piece that references gender and sexuality terms the music’s ‘outer complexity’. As a researcher working with R. Murray Schafer, 1The oboe d’amore and English horn on the recording (Truax 1994b) Barry Truax groups himself within the ‘soundscape are played by Lawrence Cherney, who also commissioned the work ’ for Soundstreams. Computer graphic images were designed by Theo composition movement, a compositional approach that ’ ‘ ’ Goldberg. The CD s cover features one of these images. The score is combines artistic creativity with social concerns (ibid.: available at the composer’s website www.sfu.ca/ ~ truax/songs.html; 193). But he has gradually extended the broad sounds- and the composer has made the complete documentation of the cape philosophy, which sometimes risks overly ‘aesthe- piece, including source sounds, processing, production score, live ’ score and spectrograms available on the Documentation DVD- ticising the sounds of the environment , to consider what ROM (Truax 2010). I thank Barry Truax for providing me with all he calls ‘context-based composition’ (Truax 1996, 2000, these materials.

Organised Sound, page 1 of 11. © Cambridge University Press, 2017. doi:10.1017/S1355771817000309

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at several registers – text, music, meaning, social and gender and sexuality may have informed Truax’scom- historical context – moving beyond such binary cate- positional approach. gories as the male and female genders or homo- and heterosexual orientations to a more fluid and dynamic 2. GENDER AND THE VOICE understanding of gender and sexuality. The sounds on the two soundtracks of Song of Songs – the voices of two Although biological sex is determined primarily by speakers (one male, one female), a singing monk and physiology, this physiological factor is not immedi- environmental sounds from birds, bells, crickets, cica- ately apparent in the realm of electroacoustic music. das, flowing water and a burning fire – are all subjected And yet, vocal music nevertheless clings to gender, in varying degrees to the technique known as time- whether we attend to it as meaningful for a given stretching to shift a sound’s time scale without varying analytical orientation or not. In their introduction to its frequency. In Song of Songs, time-stretching is used to Embodied Voices, editors Leslie C. Dunn and Nancy modify the rhythm of the spoken text subtly to make it A. Jones (1994) compare feminist uses of the term more ‘song-like’ (Truax 2003: 119), and, as I show later, ‘voice’, as a metaphor for women’s historical and when accompanied by harmonisation, the technique political struggle to be heard, with non-verbal ‘vocality’ prolongs sounds into sustained timbral textures. as the literal and sonorous expression referred to in In the opening material of the piece Truax interferes Roland Barthes’s(1977)notion‘the grain of the voice’. with the samples minimally in order to retain the sonic Dunn and Jones’sterm‘embodiment’ adjoins these two identities of the voices. The voices of the two speakers, meanings to emphasise ‘the performative dimension of the man, recited by Norbert Ruebsaat, and the woman, vocal expression … [its] dynamic, contingent quality’. recited by Thecla Schiphorst, are therefore arguably The embodied voice thus functions as the ‘material link already from the beginning identifiable with their between “inside” and “outside”, self and other … [And] representative genders. By having both speakers recite since both language and society are structured by codes the same portions of the biblical text of the Song of of sexual difference, both the body and its voice are Songs, without altering the gendered pronouns of the inescapably gendered’ (Dunn and Jones 1994: 1–2). The original text, the composer gives the male and female female voice has often been used in reference to the speakers the opportunity in the beginning of the piece to female body – think, for example, of the enticing sirens address either their respective opposite- or same- gender in Homer’s Odyssey (Cavarero 2005: 106–7; Peraino lovers.2 While the speakers in Song of Songs are intro- 2006: 1–67). Barbara Bradby (1993) has addressed links duced within the recognisable pitch range and timbre between ‘gender, technology, and the body’ in electronic attributed to their respective genders (more on this later), (dance) music to show how the female voice can be used as the piece progresses the voices are often time-stretched to represent a distorted female perspective compromised or harmonised, such that the role of the voice is changed. by the auspices of ‘male fantasy’–by the gaze of the The voices of the speakers sometimes sound ambigu- (male) producer or composer (ibid.: 158). In this regard, ously gendered, as if spoken through a vocoder, and, in a monumental study by Hannah Bosma (2003) expan- more extreme cases, the voices are stretched and filtered ded Bradby’s findings into the electroacoustic realm, so far out of proportion that they are hardly recognisable showing the prevalence in ‘electrovocal’ music of part- as voices and may at times even be heard as sustained nerships between male composers and female vocalists. environmental ambiences setting the contextual scenery Bosma observed in these ubiquitous partnerships that for the music in addition to the voice’s more conven- the female voice is often attached to a conjured image of tional solo performing role. The following analysis the female body, arguing therefore that ‘gendered voices’ explores the normative gender categories listeners are have a ‘symbolic significance’ on account of their likely to assign to the voices they first hear in the opening reflexive embodiment (ibid.: 12). of the piece. The analysis then provides examples to Gender not only shapes the manner in which we demonstrate instances in the piece in which gender intuit bodies individually, but, according to critical ‘blurring’ identified by the composer occurs (Truax theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1990), it is also the 2003: 119). The final section of the article situates Song primary means by which we explore relations between of Songs within its contemporaneous musical climate and among bodies. Sedgwick perceives gender (and not through a comparison to Susan McClary’s(2002)well- age, physical appearance, ability, sensation, frequency known analysis of Laurie Anderson’s O Superman, of behaviour, species, etc.) as the most dominant which also provides some context for how theories of dimension by which sexual orientation is determined in contemporary Western society (ibid.: 8). Electro- acoustic music, however, does not easily resolve itself 2The complete text is available on the composer’s website, Barry to reductive gender determinations, since, without Truax, Song of Songs, www.sfu.ca/ ~ truax/songtxt.html (accessed 14 visually accompanying evidence of the female body or March 2016). In an interview I conducted with Barry Truax on 12 ’ June 2014 in Berlin, the composer informed me that the text was the recognition of the performer s name or identity, it adapted from the King James translation of the Bible. is not always clear if the represented figure is indeed a

woman (Bosma 2013: 54). The disembodied voice seul (1949–50), Berio’s Visage (1961) and Takemitsu’s presents ambiguously, particularly in the slippery Vocalism Ai (Love) (1956/64)), few aside from categories of identity and orientation. As Judith Butler Truax explore erotic significance outside the confines notes, ‘[gender] identity [i]s a compelling illusion, of normative heterosexuality.3 In ‘Homoeroticism and an object of belief’ (1988: 520), and in the case of Electroacoustic Music: Absence and Personal Voice’, electroacoustic music, the voice is at the heart of this Truax writes, ‘Art is said to mirror society, but if you illusion. When the voice is recognisable as such, a look in the mirror and see no reflection, then the question as to whether the voice references its implicit message is that you don’t exist’ (2003: 119). originating speaking body still lingers. If I recognise The composer therefore makes an effort to find the voice at all, it is likely that I will attempt to representative ways of including minority identities – understand, categorise, and parse it, whether I do primarily gender and sexual identities – to amend their this consciously or unconsciously (Emmerson 2007: habitual absence from the electroacoustic music 14–16). Though, given digital processing, I may never tradition. Many of Truax’s works exhibit the composer’s successfully identify its source or cause. acknowledged ‘homoerotic’ representations, these When it comes to the acousmatic voice there seem to include Androgyny (1978), Androgyne, Mon Amour be two competing, though not absolutely exclusionary, (1996–7) after Tennessee Williams’spoems,Twin Souls theories: the first being that, once recorded, the voice (1997), several pieces on the theme Powers of Two no longer serves as a referent to its original source and (1995–9) including an operatic version (2004), and Skin cause, to its originating body (Kane 2014: 223–6); and &Metal(2004). In many pieces, Truax’ssamples the second that the voice can never be disembodied. undergo digital ‘transformations’, a term composer Advancing this second theory, Steven Connor (2012) and electroacoustic theorist Denis Smalley discusses declares ‘dissociated voices always [seem] to summon at length in the context of electroacoustic music. in their wake a phantasm of some originating body, ‘Transformations’, says Smalley, ‘concern changes in the effect convening cause’ (see also Connor 2000: 353). In state of sonic identity … A transformation may be the first case, it is tempting to explain the recorded regarded as travelling a certain distance from its base, voice as a sound ‘object’, whose identity is open and and the type of change may be definedintermsofits unrestricted by the delimiting categories that organise direction – whether the source-cause implications are actual bodies. And yet, a position that does not specific, implied or free’ (Smalley 1993: 279). account for such identifying factors as gender, however Given these transformative possibilities, I have optimistic, potentially relies on a myth of music’s chosen to focus on Song of Songs as an example that absolutism, therefore perpetuating the long-standing explores a wider spectrum of gender and sexual repre- resistance by some to acknowledge that context might sentations than the homoerotic perspective Truax not arise entirely from ‘music’s inner relationships’ explicitly mentions in his article. In this article, I take (Truax 1994a: 177). The second case, the opinion that listener perceptions of gender and sexuality in electro- the voice is never disembodied, implicitly accepts that acoustic music as context-dependent criteria, meaning we retain gender and sexual markers as structuring that notions of gender and sexual orientation depend determinants even when no body is visible. But with as much on the processes by which a piece is composed this view there is still a risk in insisting on the ‘phan- as on a contemporary understanding of gender – both tasm of some originating body’, to recall Connor’s contemporaneously to the work’s composition and, description. Maintaining that the voice is always separately, to its hearing. With supporting evidence embodied presumes that gender categories are always- from psychoacoustics and empirical studies, I consider already inherited into the acousmatic context, thereby the inheritance of gender and sexuality within a genre precluding voices from potentially sliding from one of music often represented historically as devoid of gender to another or anywhere in between, a fluidity of bodily markers. identity not easily attained with actual bodies (either in the real world or in performance), but commonly encountered electroacoustically. Truax’s solution is to 3. TEXTUAL CONSIDERATIONS negotiate the territory between voice recognition and Of the many sensuous moments recorded in the Bible, denial of its referential significance constantly. In this King Solomon’s Song of Songs is probably the longest, way, relationships develop between the voices and the detailed and most celebrated portion. Remarkably, personae they are perceived to embody as well as two thousand years after the scripture was first recor- between the other musical and environmental sounds ded in the second century CE, Solomon and Shulamite’s common to his pieces. mutual desires continue to be recognisable to us today. Despite the frequency with which electroacoustic Their love is described in vague enough terms to still be composers employ the gendered voice towards erotic ’ ends (famous examples are Schaeffer and Henry s 3For a representative list of erotic electroacoustic works, see Sofer ‘Erotica’ movement from Symphonie pour un homme (2016: 231).

relevant, while the specifics of the story – the lovers’ the hazy ‘Afternoon’ is adorned with the seasonal mutual descriptions of one another’s physical charms of singing cicadas. As ‘Evening’ descends and bodies, their movements and even details of their the heat disperses, crackling fires create a perfect set- environment – remain alluring for new interpretations. ting for amorous activities. In ‘Night and Daybreak’,a The Song of Songs is commonly interpreted in one of canopy of chirping crickets first beckons sleep and two ways. It can be read literally as a dialogue between another day dawns at the familiar tolling of the bell King Solomon and his lover Shulamite, the two named from the work’s opening. characters in the poems, or in a metaphorical reading The daily cycle is apparent not only in explicit (the typical religious interpretation), as a dialogue references to morning in the first song or in lines like between God and the people of Israel. Identifying ‘until the day break and the shadows flee away’ to the characters one way or another of course changes signify evening and daybreak in the third and fourth what relationship we perceive between them, whether movements, but also in the speakers’ more subtle romantic love or mere companionship, and this allusions to their environment – references to shadows, is without mentioning alternative levels of meaning light, sun, flowers and insects – indicating times of day yielded by retaining both the metaphorical and the or the season and in the composer’s organisation of the literal narratives as viable interpretive registers text emphasises these environmental references. By (Carr 2000). structuring the sonic environment according to textual There is much to suggest that these songs depict erotic descriptions, Truax ensures that the sounds ‘them- desire beyond mere companionship, as, for example, in selves’ are inextricable from the overlapping intimacy many physically descriptive passages, ‘thy stature is like conveyed linguistically by the adoring lovers. Like the to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes’ or warm memories invoked in the unaccompanied saetas ‘I sat down, under his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to of Federico García Lorca’s (homo)erotic poem ‘Before my taste’. Song of Songs expert Michael V. Fox con- the Dawn’, Truax’s environmental sounds convey vincingly disputes a singularly metaphorical interpreta- several levels of familiarity. Truax’s ‘Evening’ recalls tion, arguing that metaphorical poetry from this time Lorca’s forbidden ‘green hour’, the time when out-of- typically speaks of ‘love in generalities’,whereasthefirst- sight lovers cast all rules and social expectations to the person accounts in the Songs read more like personal wind to unite briefly in hidden bliss. ‘But like love / the testimony (Fox 1985: 296). Although the characters archers are blind’, writes Lorca, and in stride, Truax sometimes refer to one another in the third person out of arouses erotic connotations but grants his listeners respect, they often also refer directly each to the other, their own particular associations. something uniquely intimate for texts from this period. But Fox warns against interpretations that distort the 4. VOCAL QUALITY AND IDENTITY text’s palpable allure by overemphasising its anatomical symbolism (ibid.: 299). Love in the Songs is an orienta- Truax is an electroacoustic composer who, since the tion towards a lover, ‘It is mainly the presence or absence 1980s, has worked extensively with the granulation of of the beloved, or the expectation of that presence, that sampled sound (Truax 1985, 1988). Granular synth- determines what effects love will work’ (ibid.: 323). And esis, as it is more commonly called, affords a process of so, although only two characters are named, Fox sug- time-stretching. The grains are not merely extracted gests that one can read multiple personae in this text in from the source material, but are manipulated addition to the named man and woman (ibid.: 255). according to the flexibility afforded by the time scale. Likewise, attempts to unveil the voices in Truax’s piece – Notably, this temporal flux also contributes to per- to reconcile the voices with real world sources and causes ceived differences in timbre; Truax (n.d.) notes that the – oversimplify the complex identities evoked in the work. time-shifting he introduced in The Wings of Nike Truax’s setting exploits the text’s multitude of possible (1987) and developed further in Song of Songs voices, employing various ‘blurring’ effects to expand ‘[prolongs] the sounds into sustained timbral textures’, the meaning of love through metaphor (2003: 119). As which allow listeners to engage more closely with Truax sees it, electroacoustic composition is an ideal sound. Granular time-stretching is one manner by setting for a sexually explicit engagement with sound which Truax ‘magnifies’ sound. Using a short fixed precisely because of the ambiguity of attempting to sample, he introduces grains in the same order as they recognise sound sources. This ambiguity allows for sound in the originating sample, but staggers over- flexible relations to form among and between elements, lapping grains to deliberately extend their offsets (the people and things. point from which the sample begins to play) and Song of Songs is in four movements titled after times smooth out their envelopes so as to give the impression of day suggested in the text the piece sets, and each of the sound in slow motion. Even if, for example, two movement features sounds characteristic to the time of adjacent grains are of the same aural quality, source day indicated by that movement’s title. Monastery and envelope, one’s perception of how a sound unfolds bells and a monk’s song sound in the ‘Morning’, and in time depends on how the reintroduced grains are

staggered in relation to one another. The dragging effect is not merely acoustic, but extends also to any meaning listeners may attribute to a sound. More specifically, when applied to a recognisable voice, the technique affects the quality of that voice and hence the listener’s perception of it. All the recorded sounds on the two soundtracks – every sound in Song of Songs except the live oboe d’amore and English horn – undergo time-stretching (Truax 2010). When Truax composed this piece in the early 1990s, it was presumed in psychoacoustics and Figure 1. Fundamental frequency and gender perception psychology that pitch was the greatest determinant of (Wolfe et al. 1990). gender perception in the voice. Although the composer himself does not refer to any supporting literature from the sciences, his compositional intuitions in terms of likely to attribute to the voices they hear in Song of gender and psychoacoustic identity very much support Songs, they do not, in my opinion, denote inherited such informed hearings. A study conducted by Wolfe biological traits pertaining to the genders of either et al. (1990) demonstrated that without a visually speakers or listeners. corresponding figure, for example when speaking on Similarly to the techniques employed in the above the telephone, a speaker is generally recognised as studies, in Song of Songs, Truax plays with the funda- female when speaking at a fundamental frequency mental speaking pitch of the two speakers through above 160 Hz, roughly E3 or E below middle C, and comb filtering and harmonisation to elicit various listeners identify a male speaker when speaking at a sonic effects as a deliberate commentary on the rela- frequency below 150 Hz, or D below middle C tionship between the speakers. He does not employ any (Figure 1). Although the composer has not specifically pitch-shifting in this piece; instead, he preserves the referred to it, as we will see, Truax’s processed voices in spectral envelope of his samples and variously extends Song of Songs often intersect at the ambiguous range sample duration without altering pitch content. between 150 and 160 Hz, particularly when the text However, his setting often layers numerous samples of takes on an erotically suggestive tone. the two speakers on top of one another, sometimes Building on the findings of Wolfe et al., Weston et al. using harmonisation to emphasise other pitches more (2015) found that, when given a choice between male strongly than the fundamental frequency. Hearing and female genders, listeners correctly identified the each speaker recite the text in its entirety with the gender of a speaker even when the fundamental speak- original gendered pronouns, and then layered with ing pitch was altered, so long as the spectral envelope several more voices, may cause listeners to question the remained unaffected by pitch-shifting. Weston et al. number of perceived characters in the work, their asked listeners to gauge a speaker’s gender in three dis- respective genders, and also, given the erotic tone of tinct sources of auditory stimuli. Listeners were intro- the text, the characters’ various orientations towards duced to unadjusted recordings of the speakers and also each other. to two examples that had been digitally pitch-shifted to the ambiguous range around 160 Hz: one using ‘pitch- 5. REDEFINING CATEGORIES synchronous overlap’ that retained the spectral envelope, and another that changed the pitch and distorted the In my hearing, Truax’s setting first establishes binary spectral envelope using a ‘scalar factor’ or asynchronous categories, such as the normative male and female granular synthesis. They found that when the spectral genders or homo- and heterosexual orientations so as envelope remained intact listeners could correctly to break away from these tropes as the piece pro- identify the speaker’s gender regardless of the spoken gresses. The composer’s measured departure from pitch level. These studies show that pitch could deter- normative constraints, I believe, functions to question mine gender perception in the voice even when the and confront a priori categories – including the orien- spectral envelope is altered, but if unchanged, spectral tation each speaker takes towards their speaking flux (the rate of spectral change over time) – which is partner(s) when reciting the erotic text. This blurring of statistically greater in females (Weston et al. 2015: 210) – categories fragments and hence reorients the respective remains the primary determinant of gender perception in identities listeners might attribute to each voice. the voice. Hence, using a time-stretching process to alter For example, in the opening of Song of Songs, Truax the speaker’sinflection disproportionately to the establishes the respective identities of the two speakers original may impact perception of the speaker’s gender. by introducing the voices with minimal processing. While these findings are useful for determining a basis Alexa Woloshyn suggests the opening line, ‘Return, for the normative gender categories that listeners are return O Shulamite, return, return that we may look

Figure 2. Song of Songs,i:‘Morning’, line 5. Song of Songs,i:‘Morning’, system 5. Transformation of perceived gender identity and sexual orientation in ‘fair’ and ‘[t]errible’ voices. Oboe d’amore in A.

upon thee’ (0:37 [i, 0:44 score])4 is recited by both duet, another male voice – the same speaker doubled. speakers so as to evoke a polyamorous relationship This additional male partner completes the sentence of with Shulamite, their female lover (Woloshyn 2012: the first two speakers, ‘I am my beloveds and my beloved 159–60). In system 55 of the first movement (1:31 is mine. He feedeth among the lilies.’ Whereas at first the [i, 1:28 score]), a man speaks ‘Who is she that looketh man and woman may be heard as lovers, soon one voice forth’, and we hear a corresponding interjection from a is transformed to sound ambiguously gendered, mixed woman (Schiphorst) on the word ‘fair’ (Figure 2). The with the female voice harmonised both upwards and prominent pitch of this word sounds around A below downwards. Then, after the contraction of the voices middle C, or 220 Hz, with a characteristically feminine back to their respective genders, the doubling of male upward inflection, as determined by Wolfe et al. and voices introduces the possibility of a homoerotic rela- subsequent studies.6 The upward inflection of the ‘fair’ tionship among two of the speakers if we take this ‘he’ as voice brings its fundamental frequency to D or 294 Hz, the man’s lover. Alternatively, by the end of this phrase, the pitch at which this voice is met by another voice there are three speakers engaged in a perceived poly- (Ruebsaat), speaking the word ‘terrible’, absent the amorous relationship (Woloshyn 2012: 152). ‘t’ attack. Starting here, from the supposed female range While sexual identity is presumed to betray an indivi- (as determined by Wolfe et al.), and then gradually dual persuasion, it is, in actuality, an individual’srelation dropping in pitch by exploiting the original downward to others that defines one’ssexualorientation.Sedgwick inflection on the word ‘terrible’,nowmadeevidentbya (1990: 1–2) theorises the concurrent stability and fluidity hundred-fold time-stretching and downward harmoni- of sexual definitions in contemporary Western society in sation, the ‘terrible’ voice descends through A and G flat an investigation of the intersection between the fixed to join the oboe for a moment before sliding progres- homosexual minority (or minoritising view) and the sively lower and out of the normative female range. commonalities shared by individuals across a spectrum of The mixture of the ‘fair’ and ‘[t]errible’ voices descends possible sexualities on account of gender or other social from the female range through what could be inferred as factors (the universalising view). The fixity of the minor- the male range, but quickly departs from the human- itising view, on the one hand, is important as an identity speaking range altogether. This gender ambiguity leads a from which to relate and refer, but, on the other hand, the minute later to the first exclamation of the refrain, ‘Iam presumed stasis of sexuality – that individuals should be my beloveds and my beloved is mine.’ When the line grouped together only on account of what arouses them repeats, the two voices return to sound in their respective sexually – limits the political potential of identification male and female ranges. After additional declamations, across many more articulations of sexuality. In distinc- the repeating voices begin progressively to offset one tion from Woloshyn, whose analysis remains faithful to another until eventually a third speaker seems to join the Truax’s categorical separation of male/female and homo-/heterosexual identities, my analysis views such 4Times indicate overall running time of the piece according to www. identities not as inversionally opposite categories but as soundmakers.ca/soundstreams-commissions/song-of-songs-barry-truax. relationships determined by momentary orientation. The time cue indicated in the score is included in parenthesis. 5In lieu of bar numbers, system numbers are enumerated according to the score, beginning anew with each movement. 6In blind listening studies, upward inflection has been observed as a 6. SHARED TERRITORY typically female trait, and is encouraged in ‘communication femini- sation therapy’ for individuals transitioning to the female gender In Song of Songs, Truax disguises the process of (Hancock et al. 1997). transformation, such that the original and processed

Figure 3. Song of Songs, ii: ‘Afternoon’, systems 3–5. This transcription shows the strongest sounding fundamentals in the bass clef, the time-stretched ‘fountain’ sounding in the ambiguous register, in a range around E ﬂat3, or 155.5 Hz. X’s on systems 3 and 5 indicate the distortion caused by harmonising the consonants ‘t’ and ‘n’. Oboe d’amore notated at concert pitch.

sources sound simultaneously, thereby bridging asso- 155.5 Hz, thereby blurring any contrast of the two ciations between recognisable sounds and their trans- speakers as well as their perceived gender identities. In formed counterparts. Such pairing can easily bring this example, Truax introduces timbre and pitch ambi- about false cognates; meaning, similar sounding guity precisely when the speaker’s identity might deter- sounds may originate from different sources. In the mine their orientation towards a partner. In reciting the second movement, ‘Afternoon’ (Figure 3), we see an same text, a bond is formed between background and example of time-stretching and harmonisation that foreground voices, and because the gender identity of the introduces a change of identity and an instance in background voice is ambiguous, their relationship which the fragmented voice alters the perceived num- becomes uncertain. Neither an opposite-sex nor a same- ber of speaking personae. The male speaker enters as a sex partner can be fully ruled out. recognisable or determinately male voice reciting the The two-part texture here occasionally fragments into text ‘A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a a chorus of many more voices, for example in system 4, spring shut up, a fountain sealed’ (4:52 [ii, 0:52 score]). when F sharp in the lower voice is met also with C sharp, Here the sample is only minimally time-stretched and a ﬁfth plus an octave higher.7 Truax employs this tech- retains its spectral envelope. At the oboe d’amore’s nique of harmonisation frequently in the piece, in places entrance, the word ‘fountain’ is repeated, this time by where the text and voice are recognisable to provide an the female speaker, and subjected to heavy distortion, opportunity for attentive listeners to associate these more granulated and harmonised (both upwards and ambiguous background streams with time-stretched downwards) at a time-stretched ratio of 100:1 (Truax

2010). Interestingly, the pitches of the time-stretched 7 ‘ ’ The composer enriches the sound by overlaying many more grains fountain , which emerge through a harmonisation of than in the original, thus adding to the harmonic spectrum, which he Schiphorst’s voice, are the same frequency as Rueb- harmonises at a ratio of 4:2 (an octave below), 4:5 (a major third saat’s initial recitation of the word ‘fountain’ directly above), 4:6 (a perfect fifth above), and 4:12 (an octave plus a perfect – fifth above). So, for example, the first note E flat sounds both at the preceding the stretched passage both sounding in the fundamental (4) and one octave below, at harmonic 2, though I have 3 ambiguous register at a range around E-flat or not notated octave doubling.

voices. Listeners acquainted with granular synthesis and in the background. By the end of the A tempo (5:28 [ii, time-stretching will likely also recognise the voice given ~1:16 score]) the stretched ‘fountain’ meets the oboe’s its timbre and the distortion caused by harmonising the pitch to fully solidify the music’s many contextual unvoiced consonants ‘t’ and ‘n’ (represented by X note registers. heads in my transcription) – not coincidentally recalling the sound of the flowing fountain water. The same tech- 7. OVERCOMING MUSIC’S ‘NEUTER’ niques contributing ambiguity to our perception of the ENTERPRISE speaker’s gender identity also cause some blurring of musical categories. For instance, the initial overlap and Truax attributes the romantic tryst in the third move- subsequent transformation of the two voices (at the word ment, ‘Evening’, as the height of homoerotic sensuality ‘fountain’) is an occasion when the prominent speaking in Song of Songs on account of its sultry text, extreme voice drops into the background to take on a supporting stretching of the word ‘desire’ (12:27 [iii, 3:38 score]), role. The composer likens this ‘merging of sonic elements and a greater frequency of same-sex pairings (Truax … [to] the extended metaphor of the original text which 2003: 119–20). Yet, in my opinion, the fourth move- compares the Beloved to the richness of the landscape ment, ‘Night and Daybreak’, is more exemplary of the and its fruits’ (Truax n.d.). music-historical context in which the work was writ- According to the composer, the blurring between ten. Here (Figure 4), a gender ambiguous vocoder-type genders occurs primarily on account of the gendered voice awakens their lover calling: ‘My beloved spoke text recited by each speaker, ‘sometimes reflecting an and said to me: Rise my love, my fair one and come opposite sex form of address, and sometimes a same away’ (15:40 [iv, 1:58 score]). Truax (2010) labels this sex form’ (Truax 2003: 120). Yet he believes real-time line a ‘duet’ in the production score, as both speakers granular synthesis enhances the sexual allusions of the repeatedly recite the line in counterpoint. Chanting text: alternately therefore draws timbral similarities between the two voices on account of their similar Granular stretching of a voice, by adding a great deal of processing through comb filters, while still maintaining aural volume to the sound with the multiple layers of the identifying timbral qualities of each gender. In this grain streams … often seems to create a sensuousness, if way, the passage insists simultaneously on difference not an erotic quality in the vocal sound. A word becomes a prolonged gesture, often with smooth contours and and sameness. enriched timbre. Its emotional impact is intensified and The lower vocoder voice sounds alternately on the the listener has more time to savour its levels of meaning. pitches E flat and B flat, where the impulse provides the (ibid.: 119) music’s rhythmic propulsion. Through alternation, redundancy forces the suspension of functional har- The transformation brought on by granular stretching mony, not unlike the accompaniment in Laurie recalls a similar analytical interest invoked in gender Anderson’s O Superman (1981) (McClary 2002: 142). and sexuality studies by Sedgwick’s term ‘transitivity’, Truax’s Song of Songs shares more than a few fea- which she recognises as the ‘grounds [from which to tures with O Superman. Both reinterpret biblical texts, find] alliance and cross-identification among various but more than this, Truax’s observations on personal groups’ (Sedgwick 1990: 89). Sedgwick notes here a voice and absence compare easily to Anderson’s text, distinction between ‘transitive’ and ‘separatist’ tropes in which she states in the opening line, ‘This is not a of sexuality on account of gender. Whereas members story my people tell. It’s something I know myself’ of the latter group insist on separating men and (ibid.: 132). Sharing an interest to push beyond tradi- women, advocates of the former acknowledge alliances tion, both Truax and Anderson seem to rewrite history between groups and across genders on the grounds of in their respective retellings of biblical stories. Ander- shared sexual interests. By deliberately instituting dis- son’s recitation paraphrases the story of Adam and junctions or transformations of textual, musical, and Eve from the woman’s perspective, while Truax’s Song gender and sexual identities, more than merely ‘blur- of Songs preserves gendered pronouns to subvert het- ring’ the distinctions between the male and female eronormative assumptions common in the text’s his- voices within the music, as the composer acknowledges torical reception. doing, I find Truax’s method of composition exem- Beyond textual considerations, the works elicit plifies the transitivity model by simultaneously evoking bodily concerns, as both use electronic means to chal- both man and woman in the same vocal range. Gran- lenge the performers’ respective gender identities. ularity also causes the woman’s voice to sound huskier, Attending to Anderson’s voice, Susan McClary’s thereby departing from the breathy quality typically analysis of O Superman recognises the importance of attributed to women (Ingleton 2016: 80), and therefore the perceived ‘physical source of sound’ in this piece further cementing a connection in both pitch and tim- (ibid.: 136). As the composer herself stands on stage to bre to the supported (male) speaking voice as well as to declaim the story as she has rewritten it, Anderson the more-heavily granulated Monk’s song and cicadas places her body actively and conscientiously in a

Figure 4. Song of Songs, iv: ‘Night and Daybreak’, systems 7–9. Ambiguously gendered voices, as if spoken through a vocoder, notated in the bass clef. English horn in F.

performing role. But, according to McClary, although and Truax emphasises the elasticity of the voice – and Anderson’s female body appears to us on stage, she its transformative potential – in a habitual stretching uses vocoders to perform vocal androgyny so as to and retraction of the common markers of gender in resist the frequent scrutiny often inflicting the female sound. In both works, the text, vocal quality and role body as spectacle.8 McClary writes, ‘Laurie Ander- of the voice (whether supporting or supported) are son’s music is multiply charged … It is electronically inseparable from the music and the world in which that saturated at the same time as it insists on the body’ music sounds. (ibid.: 138). This, she says, contrasts with the neutrality Significantly, Song of Songs not only touches on the with which music is generally regarded – what she social and psychological levels ‘indirectly’ related to terms, its ‘neuter’ enterprise (ibid.: 139). In a similar- the music (Truax 1994a: 185), but it engages with the but-opposite tactic, I see Truax denying the visually musical climate of the time, as evinced by the previous corresponding bodies of his performers, so as to leave comparison to O Superman. Additionally, the work room for ambiguity. Truax’s work, like Anderson’s, draws also on the context of the composer’s own confronts music’s presumed ‘neuter’ presence by oeuvre – many of its so-called external associations simultaneously insisting on the gendered voice while having been made in other pieces. For example, Beauty also raising questions as to how categories of gender and the Beast (1989) features the oboe d’amore and are typically defined in musical contexts. Like Ander- English horn in a story-telling role, similar to how the son, Truax breaks away from the compositional mould instrument in Song of Songs seems to elongate the lines typically assigned to his gender: he is a male composer of the story by serving as a mediating presence between who embraces sexual imagery, but not by way of the the internal world of the speakers and the external common misogynist representations all too prevalent context of live performance. This instrumental media- in the Western musical canon (McClary 1989: 74). tion is not unlike Wings of Fire (1996) and Androgyne, This comparison of Truax’s music to Anderson’s Mon Amour (1997), in which an erotic text refers to a shows the transitivity of the universalising view. Both ‘personified’ musical instrument played in each piece examples confront established tropes of gender per- respectively by a female cellist and a male double bass ception and music with some similar methods and player (Truax 2000: 122). The personified instrument some methods that are less so. Anderson transforms thus enriches the ineffable resonances of ‘abstract’ the visible female body with the androgynous voice, music with the emotional realm – the listener’s inner psychology – as when in Song of Songs the pitches of the processed background and live foreground cross 8Similar to Truax’s Song of Songs,in‘O Superman’ Anderson uses harmonisation to populate the background ‘chorus’ while speaking (1:31 [i, 1:28 score]), or when the instrument is syn- through a vocoder (Anderson 2016). chronised with the electronic part (5:28 [ii, 1:16 score]

and 9:41 [iii, 0:44 score]). In Basilica (1992), Truax Bosma, H. 2003. Bodies of Evidence, Singing Cyborgs and extends the sound of chiming bells through time- Other Gender Issues in Electrovocal Music. Organised stretching so that their resonances invoke the human Sound 8(1): 5–17. voice. Likewise, in the second movement of Song of Bosma, H. 2013. The Electronic Cry: Voice and Gender in Songs, the Monk’s voice is overlaid with monastery Electroacoustic Music. PhD thesis, University of bells recognisable from the previous movement and Amsterdam. Bradby, B. 1993. Sampling Sexuality: Gender, Technology and stretched to blur the distinction between the two the Body in Dance Music. Popular Music 12(2): 155–76. sources but also to immerse them, together with the Butler, J. 1988. 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But, on the other hand, we threaten Pompidou Centre, 22 February. www.stevenconnor.com/ losing some aspect of the experience by omitting a dis- panophonia/panophonia.pdf (accessed 14 March 2016). cussion of gender and its implications for musical lis- Dunn, L. C. and Jones, N. A. 1994. Embodied Voices: tening. According to Truax, it is often assumed that Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture. music’s social level ‘include[s] all of the material aspects Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. of the context surrounding the musical performance that Emmerson, S. 2007. Living Electronic Music. Aldershot: only indirectly affect it’ (1994a: 185, emphasis added), Ashgate. thereby situating the social context in excess to a work’s Fox., M. V. 1985. The Song of Songs and the Ancient musical relationships. Conversely, his compositional Egyptian Love Songs. 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