Phonetics-based Techniques in My Compositional Methodology, and Two Compositions: ŠÀ {karāz} for large ensemble and eschaton according to bēl-rē’u-šu for percussion trio

Abstract

This dissertation explores various ways of working with acoustic analyses of speech in music composition. The first chapter presents an overview of whistled languages and discusses their potential to act as blueprints for optimizing phonetic data for compositional use. The second chapter details my workflow for incorporating formant and fundamental frequency analysis data from the phonetics software Praat into my compositional methodology. Broadly inspired by the ways in which whistled utterances transform spoken language, the workflow consists of an analysis phase in Praat followed by the conversion, optimization and orchestration of the extracted phonetic data in the computer-assisted composition environments OpenMusic and bach. Also included in the dissertation are two compositions that are both informed by phonetics. The first composition, ŠÀ {karāz} for large ensemble, contains, among the various ways it attempts to instrumentally imitate speech, a section that is constructed with the help of the workflow described in the second chapter. The second composition, eschaton according to bēl-rē’u-šu for percussion trio, engages in a deconstruction of the established roles of speech and instruments in my music, in which the performers are, at times, asked to imitate the sounds of percussion instruments with their voice, in an attempt to blur the line between speech as “the imitated” and instruments as “the imitators.