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zunge lösen | releasing the tonguefor tongue and breath 1990/1999 for one to an infinite number of performers duration: ad lib. (existing versions: 7 – 9 min) SCORE available at request!  Peter, Simon and Philipp Mayer. Andorf, Austria 2009. (Photo: Karin Klimitsch) zunge lösen | releasing the tongue (solo version 1999/ sextet version 2001/ trio version 2002), is a composition for tongue, sometimes in counterpoint with audible breath. The piece consists in the following elements: - (fine) slaps of the tongue on the bottom of the mouth, - (visible) tongue movements, - and tongue movements, wich articulate a (chance) text, based on a given material of phones, the atoms of language (syllables and smaller). Through breath they are made audible from time to time (whispering). Tongue movements and breath function as independent layers which interact. Lips and jaw don't move. They only open at the beginning to a relaxed position and close at the end. The notation uses three different techniques: a movement notation which was developed just for these tongue movements (based on Eshkol-Wachman movement notation); graphic notation; the International Phonetic Alphabet. The score consists in material from which the performer chooses, and suggestions for a structure. The piece works with the root of articulation. It is a work for voice/s and at the same time a scenic composition. Music theatre in a compact form. "[…] The work gives us the mouth exposed, opening and then closing, with its tongue a figure poking out, then slipping back, induced by 'the atoms of language' that steer the mouth towards speech. In following these movements, we may hear not the voice, or any sound per se—maybe a whisper…—but rather an oral site always already preceding speech; a reverberating gap—this oral cavity—allowing for and conditioning what may appear: a syllable suddenly there on the tongue. In focusing on this threshold of speech, the gap, and the cavity, I'm interested in considering the mouth as a vessel not filled with language, but more so, haunted or stammered by it. The hesitant moment of all such vocal pauses lead the way for considering the greater territories of lisping, stuttering, and finally aphasia. Might stuttering give us this gap, this hesitation, amplified and embodied, performed and tensed, to afford a glimpse onto the profound nature of the speaking mouth? And importantly, a view onto a subject under duress by the force of a linguistic order? A tensing of the body under the pull of voice? With its tiny repetitions, its clicks and pops, its irregularities, might stuttering put on display this prior to speech, a speech caught in the mouth, this pause, or lag, of a body moved by and moving into speech? Or, expressed also in the lisp, as a softening of the articulated, a prolonged sibilance, where the mouth slips over words and letters? Kesten's composition gives entry into such openings, exposing not the grain of a voice, but its material envelope, allowing us to query the mouth as rhythmed by a certain linguistic friction." Brandon LaBelle: Lexicon of the Mouth. Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary, 2014 |
