Bernhard Gal / Version 0

In bestimmung new york I focus on the musical/sonic qualities of language. I spent the summer of 1998 in New York City recording the voices of 15 friends and colleagues, speaking always the same phrases and words in their respective mother tongue. Using digital sampling and some computer processing, I extracted speech rhythms, speech melodies or simply sounds and recombined them creating 15 short electro-acoustic pieces.

The starting point is the experience that language when detached from its semantic and functional context, is perceived as a series of sound events, as music. I am interested in opening up this acoustic space by focusing on properties like speech melody and speech rhythm, as well as sonic and dynamic characteristics of language, yet seen from a musical viewpoint. Strongly connected to this general idea is what I call the individual ‘sonic fingerprint’ of each voice. The acoustic and also inherent emotional qualities of the 15 recordings played an important role within the compositional process. Thus, the 3-5 minutes long pieces emerge from the individual sound character of the respective voices, the influence of rhythmic and melodic textures, as well as my associative assemblage and modification of the recorded voice fragments.

I try to show inherent musical qualities of language as well as to give a subjective sample of the vast cultural landscape of New York. All recorded persons are friends and colleagues who I met during my stay in New York on various occasions. The educational and cultural background of the respective listener determines whether one understands the different languages completely, partly or not at all. Subsequently, it is possible to either create an extra-musical (semantic) context, or to focus on musical/sonic qualities. This ambiguity designs an individual perceptional basis for every single listener.