Found in translation

• This audio paper is an exploration of part of the process of making Drinking (2014) -a piece for voice, Vietnamese zither .àn tranh, and electronics. The composition is developedfrom composer William Brook’s project After Yeats in which Brooks providesan instruction describing a collaboration between a performer and a composer. AfterYeats is not itself a composition, but should rather be seen as a method with which acomposer and a performer may realize a score (Brooks 2013). At the outset the chosenpoem–A Drinking Song by William B. Yeats in a translation to Vietnamese, the nativelanguage of Nguyen Thanh Thuy–was recited, and it was the sonic trace of the readingthat was the point of departure for the composition Drinking. In this case the meaningof the words is of less signicance than the sound of the reading. After Yeats is insome ways an attempt to revive the tradition of chanting poems to a lyre accompanimentcommon in the practice of Yeats and his contemporaries. Henrik Frisk, a Swedishcomposer, takes the recording of the reading and, according to the instructions in AfterYeats,works to compose the piece according to the implications of the declamation fromNguyen’s reading. According toMarcel Cobussen, "listening also involves an opening ofthe senses that is not necessarily enfolded in conscious meaningfulness, by sense. It alsotakes place outside, before or beyond sense; it also refers to a sense that operates outside,before or beyond signication" (Cobussen 2008: p. 131). The emotional responses thatarise from engaging in artistic practice operate in similar ways to how Cobussen situateslistening in a space beyond signication. They may be communicated and sometimesbrought to the fore, but they always have a tendency to appear mysterious, arcane andephemeral. The inuence by the many diferent kinds of agents that may be found inBrooks’ meta-composition makes the creative process daunting to understand but is alsowrapped around the idea of what is to be found outside, before and beyond.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Musik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Music (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Translation

Authenticity

Interpretation

Emotional Response

Electronic music

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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art (ämneskategori)