Stitching: Orality, Literacy, and Music Sarah Anne O’Halloran Tralee, Ireland B.A. Mus., University College Cork, 2004 M.Phil., University College Cork, 2007 M.A., Queens University Belfast, 2007 P.G. Cert. University College Cork, 2009 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy McIntire Department of Music University of Virginia August 2015 Abstract( ! Early!writings!about!the!phonograph!show!a!longing!for!the!intimacy!and!presence! associated!with!orality.!But!the!longing!for!orality!is!not!simply!a!historical! phenomenon,!recent!writings!about!literature!show!an!interest!in!immediate,! communal!outward:looking!verbal!art.!In!recent!decades!audio!books!have!become! big!business,!live!storytelling!events!take!place!at!venues!around!the!country,!and! narrative!radio!is!undergoing!a!renaissance.!Twentieth!and!twenty:first!century! composers!have!engaged!deeply!with!the!creative!possibility!of!speech,!combining!it! with!music!to!create!innovative!and!compelling!verbal!art,!that!takes!place!in!time! and!acoustic!space,!rather!than!on!the!silent!printed!page.!! In!this!dissertation!I!explore!the!combination!of!music!and!words!through! composition.!And!I!use!Walter!J.!Ong’s!theories!of!orality!and!literacy!to!reflect!on! my!work,!and!to!analyze!music!by!Frederic!Rzewski,!Shelley!Hirsch,!Meira!Asher,! and!myself.!! ! ! ! Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Sound and Presence 4 Primary Orality 8 Literacy 9 Secondary Orality 15 Secondary Orality and Avant Garde Music 20 Chapter 1. Squaring and Non Sequiturs: Music by Frederic Rzewski 32 Coming Together 33 The Waves 40 Lost and Found and De Profundis 48 Conclusion 54 Chapter 2. How do you remember? Shelley Hirsch’s Storytelling 56 Listening to Stories 57 Speaking, Writing, and Creativity 59 Memory 66 Inter’textual’ References 77 Conclusion 84 Chapter 3. Uneasy Listening: Voices of Conflict in Meira Asher’s Music 86 Infantry and the Creative Potential of Lists 88 Face_WSLOT and Verbatim Theater 95 Autobiographical Performance, Testimony, And Trauma 98 Conclusion 114 Chapter 4: Stitching: My Work with Words and Music 118 Strained Conversations 119 linger…figure…flutter 121 Cat House 124 Ciúnas agus Dúil 126 Stitching 130 Adaptation 133 Storytelling Techniques 138 Text on Screen 139 Live Speech and Recorded Speech 141 The Chorus 143 Memory 147 Conclusion 152 Conclusion 153 Appendix 1. Description of Frederick Rzewski’s Squaring process in Coming Together. 160 Appendix 2. Stories from linger…figure…flutter 171 Appendix 3. Score: Strained Conversations 175 Appendix 4. Score: Ciúnas agus Dúil 197 Appendix 5. Score: Stitching 242 Bibliography 358 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisor Matthew Burtner and the members of my dissertation committee: Judith Shatin, Michael Rasbury, and Luke Dahl. Thanks also to Ted Coffey. I would also like to thank my friend and collaborator Margaret Schedel for her all of the guidance and creative opportunities she has shared with me over the years. I am grateful to my family for their constant support of my creative work. I am especially thankful to husband B.J. who gave me so much encouragement throughout this process. He was also a very helpful proof reader. Thanks to Colin Bell for working with me on Stitching. And to our Edinburgh performers Jenny Hulse, Suzanne Dance, Tom Freeman, and Liz Strange. The GWU Department of Music hosted me as Artist in Residence while working on Stitching. I am grateful to Douglas Boyce and Robert Baker for their support for the project and regular feedback on the work. Thank you to the GWU performers who worked on the Stitching workshop performance: Neil Weston, Lori Barnet, Allen Schult, Emily Goggin, Ariel Nathanson, Rachel Weinstein, Danielle Santilli, Grace Srinivasan, Michael Adam, Robert Baker, Kevin Frey, and John Vagas. And to Michaela Stanch who created some of the knitwear for the performance. A special thank you goes to Meira Asher and Shelley Hirsch for their generosity and openness in taking part in interviews, our conversations were interesting and inspiring. Introduction To be heard, poetry needs to be sounded… Unsounded poetry remains inert marks on a page, waiting to be called into use by saying, or hearing, the words aloud.’1 Relationships between language, literature, sound, and music have fascinated me for many years. Research in these areas has helped me to develop as a composer. This research has given me deeper insight into my creative work, pushed my work in new directions, and shed light on the music that influences my practice. My dissertation is both a creative exploration of the combination of words and music through composition, and a set of case studies of music in which words play a key role. In my first chapter I discuss music by Frederic Rzewski; in my second I examine the work of Shelley Hirsch; in my third chapter I consider pieces by Meira Asher; and in the fourth chapter I reflect on my own compositions. The works I discuss are quite contrasting in terms of the musical styles and compositional methodologies they reflect and their relationships to language. In each chapter I address some or all of the following questions: What is involved in composing, improvising, adapting, or finding words for combination with music? What is the relationship between the words and music? Do they operate on parallel or intersecting planes? What kind of story can words and music tell together? What can words and music do together besides tell a story? How does the use of audio technologies affect the combination of words and music in the work studied? The thread that binds these questions together is my application of Walter J. Ong’s theory of orality and literacy. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Charles Bernstein, Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), Kindle edition. ! 1! Early writings about the phonograph and talking book records show a longing for the immediacy and presence of orality. Edison, for example, hoped that his technology could overcome 'the “mediating” practice of reading'2 by allowing listeners to have (almost) direct contact with the writer through recordings of his voice.3 This longing for orality is not merely a historical phenomenon. Recent writings about literature show a similar interest in an immediate, communal, outward-looking verbal art. For example, in the 1998 collection Close Listening Charles Bernstein proposes that sounded poetry: ‘… provides special possibilities for the listener, from direct response to the work, ranging from laughter to derision; to the pleasure of getting lost in language that surges forward, allowing the mind to wander in the presence of words. ’ 4 Poetry is not the only area in which the longing for orality can be see though. In recent decades audiobooks have become big business and acquiring more and more credibility; as Matthew Rubery points out, even the president of the United States is now an audiobook narrator.5 Live storytelling has undergone a great revival and today storytelling events like story slams are taking place across the country and feature in radio shows like The Moth Radio Hour. For many years, the performance of autobiography has featured prominently in the work of feminist, queer (and other) theater practitioners and performance artists. Narrative radio seems to be undergoing a renaissance thanks to the influence of productions like This American Life and the ease of distribution offered by podcasting. But we do not only crave orality in the artwork we consume; we even want our domestic !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 Jason Camlot, 'Early Talking Books: Spoken Recordings and Recitation Anthologies, 1880-1920,' in Book History, 6 (2003), 147-173, 147. 3 Ibid., 148. 4 Bernstein, Close Listening. 5 Matthew Rubery, ‘Introduction,’ in Matthew Rubery ed., Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies (New York and London: Taylor and Francis, 2011), Kindle Edition. ! 2! appliances and portable devices to talk to us. Many of us can easily recognize and name the voices of artificial intelligences like Siri and Cortana. They are marketed to us as helpful friends who are always available. While there has been a resurgence of interest in listening to words in literature since the development of the phonograph that interest was always present in the world of music. Words have probably been combined with music for as long as they both have existed. In the last century musicians have expanded into many new territories in their exploration of words and voices. In popular music, for example, rap artists developed a contemporary form of oral poetry, which combines rhythmic, stylized speech with sung melodies, beat boxing, sampled music, and original musical material for acoustic and electronic instruments. On the internet the Gregory Brothers and many Youtubers like them create extremely popular comic music by sampling and autotuning speech from news broadcasts, political speeches and viral videos.6 In avant-garde music composers and performers like Luciano Berio,7 Peter Maxwell Davies,8 Cathy Berbarian9 and Joan La Barbara10 have explored a massive range of vocal sounds with and without the use of words. Creative uses of spoken words can be in the work of composers including Laurie Anderson,11 Tom Johnson,12 John Cage,13 and Eve Belgarian.14 My music and the music I !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 6 Jenna Wortham, ‘From Viral Video to Billboard 100,’ in New York Times, 09/05/2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/business/media/06tune.html?_r=0 7 For example Luciano Berio, Sequenza III (Universal Edition, 1966). 8 For example Peter Maxwell Davies, Eight Songs For a Mad King (Boosey and Hawkes, 1969) 9 For example Cathy Berberian, Stripsody (Edition peters, 1966). Cathy Berbarian, MagnifiCathy – The Many Voices of Cathy Berberian (Wergo, 1977). 10 For example Joan La Barbara, Sound Paintings (Lovely Music, 1990).