The relationship between music and language has firmly imprinted itself upon me over the past few years, and I hope to share some of the insights I have been fortunate enough to stumble upon. Tonight’s program includes works written by composers who specifically searched for connections between speech and song, words and notes.

Composers of all genres and cultures seem to have been fascinated by what I have dubbed ‘musical-lingual overlap’ in both vocal and instrumental music. In Western art music composers such as Balakirev, Janáček, Bartók, Schoenberg, Partch and Bernstein have all explored the relationship between music and language in their music. It is no accident that 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose belief that language and music had similar structures, was himself a composer, and whose music you will hear tonight.

One of the most interesting insights into such phenomena is provided by French anthropologist and amateur musician Claude Lévi-Strauss, arguably one of the century’s most influential thinkers. Lévi-Strauss proposed a science of mythology, where myth was analysed as if it were a musical score. Lévi-Strauss most well-known book, The Raw and the Cooked, itself was written analogously to musical structures (such as an Overture, Symphony, Fugue etc.), instead of usual ‘chapters’ to accurately represent his thoughts on myth and culture. Interestingly, the influence of Lévi-Strauss provides a thread through the program: Rousseau’s work was one of the major influences to Lévi-Strauss; I have written a piece using the form and structure of the Overture of The Raw and the Cooked; and Berio used the text of The Raw and the Cooked as his libretto for perhaps his most (in)famous piece, Sinfonia.

As both a researcher and composer, I see the relationship between music and language as an essential component of human culture. This program of works provides many different perspectives on this relationship, which will surely stimulate your own imagination and musician inside.

Michael Sollis

Francis Poulenc – Rapsodie Nègre
Jean-Jaques Rousseau – Overture to Le Devin du Village
Michael Sollis – The Raw and the Cooked: Overture
Nebojša Jovan Živković – To the Gods of Rhythm
Nigel Butterley – The Wind Stirs Gently
Wendy Hiscocks – Pages of Poetry
Luciano Berio – Folk Songs

27 June 2008 @ National Library of Australia