Unsung Songs by Michiko Kawagoe

CD YGM-05
Published by Yank Gulch Music
Copyright © 2008. All rights reserved.

Notes on the Music.

The music on this CD is made from speech-like sounds that were composed and realized using a software synthesis system called SYNTAL. The system incorporates a version of the Klatt speech synthesizer (see J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 87, 1990, 820-857), and is available as freeware for computers with UNIX-type operating systems, such as Mac OSX, Linex, etc. Please email us for information.

The Scale of Coelacanth (2007) [5m 31s].

The piece is in a simple ternary form. Voiced sounds with vowel-like sound colors and noises underneath are presented in two voices in the first section, where quick rhythms are contrasted with sustained noises. The second section combines unvoiced noises with high straight tones that then move in glissando. Variants of the ideas from the first section make up the third section. The synthesized voices used in The Scale of Coelacanth are intended to reflect the continuity of time from the beginnings of the Coelacanth, an ancient, nearly extinct fish thought to share ancestry with land vertibrates, to human beings whose sounds have been produced only recently in terms of geologic time. Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the piece:

Orange Leaves (2000) [3m 36s].

This through-composed piece features a motivic idea over fast, rhythmic figures as accompaniment. Fragments of the motive appear throughout, with manipulations that include panning and pitch changes. The title comes from a tree with red and yellow leaves. When the leaves are blended together by the wind, the tree appears to have orange leaves.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning:

A Friday Morning, (2006)

Movement I [2m 17s].

Movement II [2m 18s].

Movement III [2m 29s].

The sound colors in A Friday Morning are derived from the vowels in a choral work "With Their Own Voices" composed on a Japanese text by Kawagoe in 2004. The first two movements have four contrapuntal lines; the third movement, six lines. The first and third movements are fast and rhythmic, employing percussive and other short sounds. By contrast, the second movement is slow, with sustained tones and airy noises. The piece tries to capture---with music that is speech-like, but beyond words---Friday-morning feelings---of excitment about the coming weekend and sighs about all the work to be done during the long day until the weekend actually arrives.

Here are excerpts from Movement I, Movement II, and Movement III:

Unsung Song (2007) [6m 40s].

In a simple rondo form, this piece is made up of varieties of sound colors and fast rhythms in the refrains, and unvoiced noises and straight tones, with smoothly rising and falling time-envelopes, in the couplets. Many of the characteristics of SYNTAL are exploited here. The composer hopes the piece leads listeners to reflect on the beauty of human voices and also on the possibilities of harmony in synthesized voices.

Here is an excerpt:

When Earth Had No Life (1999) [10m 59s].

This piece is made up of a theme and seven variations. The variations emphasize in different ways contrasts between straight tones and glissandi, noise and voiced sounds, and both voiced and unvoiced plosive-like sounds. There was no life in the Precambrian era, but the planet was filled with other forms, both active and quiescent---volcanic eruptions, stony mountains, rocky and sandy deserts, and primitive seas---nothing green, however. That image of the world is depicted with sounds that foreshadow human voices that are to come.

Here's an excerpt from the piece:

Propagation (2005) [5m 23s].

This piece is comprised of eight contrapuntal lines or voices mixed down into stereo. The opening motive is varied throughout in its rhythm and sound colors. An image of propagation as something alive is suggested by the repeating and overlapping of the motive, especially towards the end of the piece. Propagation has been included in a compilation of 47 women composers and sound designers from around the world offered as a CD by the "Women Take Back the Noise" project, Ubuibi USA.

Here's an excerpt from the piece:

Notes on Color Music in General

In all "color music", substantial compositional attention is devoted to an aspect of sound derived from speech called sound color. The concept of sound color was introduced and extensively developed in the 1985 book, Sound Color, by Wayne Slawson. The book has now been reissued by Yank Gulch Music in 2007 in paperback, with an accompanying CD of sound examples.

You can find a brief survey of sound-color concepts here.

About the Composer

Michiko Kawagoe was born in Osaka, Japan, and now lives in Tsukuba. Her works have been performed in the United States, Israel, Germany, England, and Japan; they have been broadcast on FM radio in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland OR, and over WDR in Germany. After graduating from Oita Prefectural College of Art (Japan) with a major in oil painting, she received Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Louisiana State University on full scholarships, where she studied composition with Dinos Constantinides and Stephen David Beck, and piano with Michael Girt. In 1995--96, she was enrolled in the special artist diploma course in the Jerusalem Rubin Academy of Music and Dance (Israel) through a grant from the Japan Israel Women's Welfare Organization. There she studied composition and orchestration with Menachim Zur and Ami Maayani. In 1998--99 she studied the SYNTAL program with Wayne Slawson at the Computer and Electronic Music Studio of the University of California, Davis. Her works include instrumental and vocal music in addition to electro-acoustic music. She has won numerous awards, including a grand prize in the 10th Miyanichi Music Competition in 2004 in Japan. As noted above, Propagation was included in a CD compilation of the works of 47 women composers and sound designers in the "Women Take Back the Noise" project by Ubuibi, U.S.A. She joined John Zorn's COBRA with her own SYNTAL sounds at a presentation conducted by Koichi Makigami at La Mama, Tokyo in 2006.

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