One of the first things that became clear was that this would be a wordless vocal score. The choir is never actually singing real words; they’re singing syllables, they’re singing nonsense words. I was listening to legendary avant-garde vocalist Joan La Barbara, a piece of hers named “Erin.” At one point, you hear this leaping melody. She just does it once, but I latched onto that. I decided to sample it and create a loop out of it. It’s almost like baby talk, like language being developed and formed. And that kind of resonates with the actual scene, where they are reverse-engineering the language based on the writing and on the sounds emitted by the aliens.

—Jóhann Jóhannsson; from an interview in Vulture discussing the vocal score to the movie Arrival; (2016)

One day, I had this revelation that the voice could be like an instrument. I didn’t have to do words, and it could be male and female, animal, vegetable, mineral. There could be landscape, characters, textures.

—Meredith Monk; quoted in Zachary Woolfe, “A Singular World That Won’t Fade Away,” New York Times, November 30, 2014, AR1.

Calligraphy II/Shadows (1995)

for voice and Chinese instruments

Instrumentation: Voice, Dizi (bamboo flutes), Erhu (2 silk-string, violin-like instrument), Yangqi (dulcimer played with bamboo mallets) and percussion.

Duration: appprox. 20 minutes

Program Notes

Traditionally, instrumentalists work very hard to emulate the human voice. We practice vocalises to learn how to shape lyrical, melodic phrases. When appropriate, we also use mutes, pitch bends, and other performance techniques to imitate a singing quality. In a type of role reversal, Joan La Barbara has made a career out of treating the human voice as an instrument. Lyrics are a secondary consideration if considered at all. 

La Barbara has recorded with Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and was a performer at John Cage's final concert performance. Her music has been used for such diverse projects as the "Signing Alphabet" for Sesame Street and as a basis for the alien language in Denis Villeneuve's film Arrival (Erin). The work I am drawn to is Calligraphy II/Shadows for voice and Chinese instruments written for the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company. Here is an exquisite example of how La Barbara uses the voice as just another instrument as she explores the lyrical gestures of traditional Chinese calligraphy. There are moments when it can be hard to tell if a particular tone is being produced vocally or instrumentally. Parts seem to alternatively integrate and imitate the sound quality of one another, a tradition that harkens back to the best qualities of jazz combo performance. It's intimate, meditative, and transcendental. 

I wish I could have seen the entire choreographed production, but the music is lovely by itself under headphones. The opening section establishes a tonal vocabulary and has a calm, ambient quality that I find myself getting lost in in the very best sense. The next section is shorter and more active and explores glissandos and punctuated tonalities with the vocal part blending in and imitating the strings and percussion. This is followed by a beautiful moment of sustained harmonies and textures, along with the return of the opening section's vocabulary. This segment transports me every time and makes me forget, if only just for a moment, the chaos of current events in a way that only the best music can. Of course, the repose is only temporary, and the swirling glissandos and vocal punctuations return along with the opening scale. What follows is an explosive development section with skyrocketing bursts of color and interweaving streamers of melodic line and bright splashes of metallic percussion that bring to mind visions of a fireworks display reaching a glorious climax. Debris scatters, elements fade, and we're left with a mumbling discussion about what just happened. The memory of the opening statement carries us up and away.