Posts Tagged ‘intonation’
Self Portrait at Six is a musical treatment of speech recorded by myself as a six-year-old. I was attracted to this recording for three chief reasons. Firstly, such a sound recording from the past offers an experience of that most seductive of fantasies - time travel. This is particularly poignant here, as the recording includes the voice of my late mother; the piece is partly an attempt to resurrect her, invoking the evocative powers of sound. Another area of interest for me is the investigation of the notion that music is closely related to the prosodic features of speech - by examining my own speech as a child, I may find insights into my personal musical style. Thirdly, the concept of a portrait made at a distance of time interested me. It raises questions about identity - it feels to me as if I am making a portrait of someone quite distinct from myself. The recordings of speech are treated as melody, and accompanied in such a way as to accentuate their rhythmic and melodic properties. The work is shaped according to the found objects’ properties; poor recording quality is largely preserved as indicative and evocative of the date and context of recording (Surrey, England, 1972). Hello, it’s Robert speaking again I made pottery today I left Robert with the tape recorder We went to the museum on Sunday In illustrating these texts, I have attempted to re-enter my mental state at the age of six and mix it with my present ways of thinking about music. Thus the musical language reflects the six-year-old’s naïveté and imaginative playfulness; the challenge was continually to simplify, to place things into the most direct context I could. - Robert Davidson 1999 |