Frances Lynch and Altin Volaj

This seminar focussed on new vocal techniques being developed by Altin Volaj with the singer Frances Lynch, directed towards Altin's opera Ion.

The work started during Altin's D.M.A programme in Maryland in 2005, and was semi-staged in 2008.
Although called Ion after the play by Euripides, the female character of Cruesa is strongly featured.
The piece has the typical Greek symmetrical choruses of 3 male and 3 females.
The scoring is for saxophone and 2 percussionists.
In the tutti of scene 4, the crowds are heard chanting in quasi aleatoric layers over atonal soundscapes.
Altin commented that it is hard to find a notation for all the different elements - dance, singing, movements, extended dramatic forms, and part of his enquiry at Sussex is directed towards refining this question and answering it. Collaborative work (with Frances Lynch) is extremely helpful towards these ends.
Frances Lynch then performed a segment of the work, in which Cruesa speaks with an intensely personal interior monologue about her fate.
This was dramatised in our seminar in an impressive live performance. Frances's voice at first appeared completely mediated through the microphone and reverb technique that she had set up with just the help of resonances from the grand piano. The audience only gradually realised that she was in fact singing live. This made quite an impression.
Altin then went on to discuss his interest in a wide pallette of vocal sounds:
1. Free speech with no accents
2. Rhythmic speech
3. Spoken voices with a melodic line (sprechstimme)
4. Sung speech
5. Inprecise singing
6. Closed mouth singing
7. Traditional song

Frances Lynch commented that the way she understood or interpreted the role of Creusa was as a person living intensely in her head, and in real exchange (from the neurotically internalised state to the everyday state of controlled communication).

Frances was asked about her career. She commented that she likes working with living composers, and does not enjoy the museum atmosphere of most opera houses, although she did train as a classical opera singer. To this Altin added that he appreciated the depth of knowledge of Frances - her knowledge and understanding of contemporary modes of performance being a base-line starting point, from which things could immediately develop. He said these three days of collaboration had been a very good experience, and he recalled that Berio primarily wrote for individual musicians he knew, not for generic performers.

A comment was made on the use of electronics in this 'mock up' version for today's seminar. The comment was that the electronics were actually quite interesting in their alienating affect, and perhaps they should be retained. Instruments might make the expression too 'cosy'.

A further question was posed on notation: how do you balance between the 'open' and the 'specified'. What room do you leave for interpretation? What is the role and nature of notation? [Is it prescriptive or does it document collaborative process in some contexts or senses?]

Frances responded that the negotiation process is subtle, and it is two-way. The notation by itself is not sufficient for a meaningful performance. Altin referred to various well known ensembles who specifically discourage composers from over-notating their compositions.

Evangelia Rigaki

Evangelia Rigaki is mostly a music theatre and opera composer. Since music theatre is inherently collaborative and involves working with people from different backgrounds and disciplines (and, sometimes, of different skill levels), the amount of creative control a composer has can vary significantly with each different project.

In Gesprekken Van de Ziel, Evangelia worked with the director Sjaron Minailo over two months. They worked with non-western musical traditions and in this context had to decide whether to merely represent this, or to create new material in order to dramatise the relation between the spectator and the observed culture. They chose the latter solution.

In this piece there was a choir, an ud player and a solo singer. The piece was based on a song of Umm Kulthum (Egyptian singer, c. 1900 - 1975). The piece was based around the interplay between the choir and the soloist. The choir became more “hostile” (both in their use of physical gestures as well as through their musical material, which clashed rhythmically and harmonically with the soloist’s) the more the soloist sang newly-composed material. They were positioned among the audience, thereby using the performance space to enhance the effect of their interaction with the soloist. Their proximity to the audience meant that even their breathing could be audible to the audience and was therefore used and notated in their music.

The breathing of the soloist was also important (and was audible due to her microphone) and was therefore precisely notated: the more she sang newly-composed material, the more her breathing was notated to be at awkward intervals. Evangelia collaborated closely with the soloist (Esra Dalfidan) to determine her limits so that this would genuinely tax her, making her look and sound uncomfortable. This served to illustrate her discomfort at the hostility exhibited towards her by the choir. The presence of the composer during rehearsals was therefore necessary for the piece to have acquired its present form.


In Narcissus, Evangelia wrote for the percussionist Damien Harron on solo prepared marimba. The marimba was prepared, among other ways, with paper to mute the sound. For convenience, the score was notated on the paper. The percussionist would rip off the paper as the piece progressed, thereby enacting Narcissus’s literally parting the waters in order to embrace his reflection (both in terms of the visual gesture of tearing, as in the musical gesture of removing the paper which was muffling the marimba and giving it back its clear, watery sound), as in Ovid’s telling of the myth. By also tearing up the score (which was transcribed on the paper), however, the percussionist also destroys the framework of the allegory which casts him in the role of Narcissus.

In Tempt My Better Angel, Evangelia collaborated with choreographer Darren Ellis. In this piece, the music and the choreography were developed simultaneously, in an unusual model for collaboration in dance, where the music is usually written first. Evangelia further wanted the instrumentalists not to be stationary, but to move about the stage and perform physical gestures, thereby participating in the choreography.

Darren had wanted highly rhythmical and melodic music in order to provide audible cues for the dancers, whereas Evangelia wanted to use arhythmic and extended techniques. A middle ground was reached by deciding to use the physical actions of the instrumentalists to provide visual cues for the dancers, thereby eliminating the need for rhythmical, “danceable” music.

Little Instruments of Apprehension (again choreographed by Darren Ellis and on a libretto by W. N. Herbert), was scored for one baritone and one dancer/percussionist.

The fact that Darren was both dancer and instrumentalist (playing percussion on various props while dancing) meant that writing this piece was a highly collaborative process, as the music and choreography were completely interdependent.

The libretto was topical and concerned with the hysteria around swine flu. This was illustrated by the incomprehensibility of Darren’s vocal material (which was based around lists in various languages, which Bill Herbert called “swarms of words”) contrasted with the baritone’s conventional sung delivery style of material in English.

Unexpected serendipitous effects can arise from unusual meetings between artists and performers of different backgrounds, disciplines and levels of training, taking one out of one's comfort zone and making collaborative works more unique and exciting.

In questions, E.R. was asked, 'is the dream to be part of a collective; or are collaborations to an extent accidental?' Evangelia responded that collaborations are up to an extent accidental, as, for a young composer, any opportunity is welcome and the ability to collaborate with others might be regarded as an important skill. However, I aim to nurture long-term collaborations with people I trust artistically and enjoy working with, such as Bill Herbert, Sjaron Minailo and Darren Ellis.

E.R. was further asked, 'Is it meaningful to do the same piece with different people; in the sense that so much work is invested in specific circumstances and factors?' She responded that it is possible for the same piece to turn out completely different depending on whom you are collaborating with. In any case, I try to tailor each piece to the particular performers and the performance space, and I dont mind that this imbues my pieces with an ephemeral quality.