The Spell of Speech (2004)

Actress, live-electronics and electro-acoustic sounds. [ca. 30'00]

Premiered by Hannah Chodos (actress), Dartmouth College, May 16, 2004.

Available for download:

Concert recording (22 MB): mp3
Written thesis: HTML or PDF

This piece deals with the musicality of human speech. The “pre-text” for the composition is l’Attente (Waiting), by Roland Barthes, from the book Fragments d’un Discours Amoureux. Careful work on intonation and prosody is complemented by electroacoustic manipulations, or expansions, of the contours of the voice. The Spell of Speech was composed at the Bregman Electro-Acoustic Studio at Dartmouth College in conjunction to the Master’s degree thesis of same name defended in 2004.