Expressivity in Speech and Music
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
4:30-6:00 p.m.
Logan Center 802
Please join the Sound and Society Workshop on Wednesday, November 20th, as we welcome Rebecca Flore (PhD Candidate, Music History and Theory), who will be presenting an abridged version of a chapter in-progress from her dissertation, entitled “Expressivity in Speech and Music.” She describes the chapter and its place in her dissertation project as follows:
“My dissertation explores the intersections of speech and music as systems of organized sound in musical works that use recorded speech as a compositional object; that is, music that is in someway structured around recordings of human speech. The second half of my dissertation considers the intersections and conflicts between music and natural language as means of communication. This final chapter considers the role of expressivity in the musicalization of speech, and how musical expressivity can be used to reinforce, complement, or enhance meaning as communicated by the speaking voice.
Expressivity is a feature of both speech and music that is important in communicating moods and emotions. Expressive speech is not necessary to understand meaning, but rather it gives information beyond the plain message though paralinguistic features like pitch, loudness, syllable stress, etc. In music, the interpretation of emotional content in music is related not only to features of the sound but also expectancy, arbitrary association, and iconic signification. The musical works explored in this dissertation are built on the qualities of expressive speech of individual speakers. Here the fixed nature of the recorded speech is particularly important—one particular vocal delivery is repeatable and therefore expressive features of this delivery can be worked by composers into the musical structure.
My musical analyses will explore how expressive speech is translated into or supported by musical gestures within given musical frameworks of pitch, rhythm, and timbre. For this abridged version of the chapter, I will focus on “Billie” (2003) by Dutch tonal avant-garde composer Jacob TV (https://open.spotify.com/track/6fL3RAS1riMcBuLMt0Aedd?si=MCquZXK0TW-Z_Dp1VErS5Q), a piece that features the voice of Billie Holiday excerpted from various interviews over the course of her career. By juxtaposing Holiday’s speaking voice from different periods of her life and by adding instrumental backing, TV’s musical accompaniment brings out the virtuosity and musicality of Holiday’s speech, particularly late in her life as her voice is audibly deteriorating. My analysis of this work will demonstrate the power that musical gestures have to inform meaning in connection with a spoken text—a sort of melding of semantic, pragmatic, and musical meaning.”
Click to download the paper here (please do not share or circulate).
Refreshments will be served! Please feel free to contact either Anna (abgatdula@uchicago.edu) or Alex (murphya1@uchicago.edu) with any questions or concerns. Persons who need assistance should notify the coordinators in advance.