Theorizing Voice in Performance: György Ligeti's "Aventures"

Abstract

Theorizing Voice in performance: Gyorgy Ligeti's Aventures Zeynep Bulut Voice: is it a substance? Is it personal property? Is it a particular medium of a particular body? Is it an assemblage of "fleshed" sounds? Performance: is it the contingent, the immediate, the medi ated by the condition of here and now, which is lived only once as Peggy Phelan posits?1 What is the intersection of the phenomenal operation of voice and performance? This paper aims at opening a dis cussion about these questions by looking at (1) the phenomenon of sound as the kernel of the voice, (2) the notion of "performance" at the heart of the everyday operation of the voice, and (3) György Ligeti's Aventures as an example of this intersection of voice and per formance in its use of the everyday voice.2 Theorizing Voice in Performance Sounds of the Voice . . . Freudian psychoanalysis reminds us that the primarily protective and sensible environment of the womb is sound; the mouth is the first organ of pleasure; and mother's voice is the first recognizable sound for the baby. This situates the mother's womb as the state of origin, the home, the place of attachment. The place of detachment then con structs and is constructed by the external, the foreign. To understand the sounds of the voice, I read the relationship between sound and voice with reference to these notions of the home and the foreign, and the oscillation between them. What might it mean to associate voice with the home, the place of intimacy and attachment, and sound with the place of detachment, with the foreign? Gaston Bachelard's defini tion of the "house" in Poetics of Space helps us imagine such connection between voice and home, and sound and foreign: The house, quite obviously, is a privileged entity for a phe nomenological study of the intimate values of inside space . . . for our house is our corner of the world. As has often been said, it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word. . . .3 The house extends the inside to the outside, and in return, accommodates the outside within the inside. Similar to house, voice is an interior space that extends the inside to the outside, and vice versa. It is the very personal, reserved space that finds its place in the body. Body is the house of voice. It preserves the interiority. However body is not simply "the entity of the intimate values of inside space," as Bachelard would argue. It is rather the portal. The inside space is voice. Opening the portal, voice stretches the "intimate values" to the outside. What is the engine of this stretch? Bachelard posits "the binding principle in this integration is the daydream."4 Interrupting the every day continuum, the daydream suggests a space between appearance and disappearance. The question is how we daydream, how we let ourselves be interrupted. What is the glue between different images, or snapshots that we fantasize? I suggest "sound" as a potential answer. As distinct from voice, sound is experienced like a daydream, like an imaginary interruption. Its physical and phenomenal qualities generate the oscillation between appearance and disappearance. The source of sound is almost always invisible. Even if we see how one generates a certain sound, we cannot pinpoint where the sound is. Sound disseminates. Even if we localize or position a certain sound, we cannot 46 Perspectives of New Music control its fluidity and depth. Sound is not discrete by essence. It comes and goes. Its source is imaginary. Its very existence depends on another. Sound can exist only if it resonates with a certain body. It physically needs a surface to be heard. Sound is then intimate with a degree of proximity. The human body can be considered a surface that resonates with various sounds with a certain level of proximity. We are accustomed to feel ourselves close to sound, since it is the very primary, protective and sensible medium, as mentioned above. Yet how do we understand a sound, give it a name? Sound partially remains a mystery. We attribute a certain meaning to a certain sound based on the...