The Vocal Performance Text as Historiography (original) (raw)

Abstract

The human voice in the performance of text is ephemeral and yet not intangible. It has substance, meaning and effect over and above the language it speaks. In historiographical analyses, the vocal performance text is often ignored in favour of visual elements, and textual interpretation. Mechanical, or ‘technological’ recordings may render a vocal performance in a repeatable medium, however the use of such recordings for analysis is subject to the changing state of the listener over time, apart from any degradation in the quality of the sound recording over time. Phonetic transcription transforms the living, breathed and mobile sound into a static representation, and while phonology provides the settings within which linguistic and para-linguistic components exist, these are still generally defined in terms which promote the language, rather than the uniquely spoken event. This paper proposes that the vocal performance text has material substance, it cannot be predicted, and argues that it has rarely – if ever – been captured adequately because certain elements are always ignored, specifically those elements which constitute an original vocal performance text.

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