2019 . four studies for voice and alto saxophone . 7’45 .
Values is a collection of four voice and saxophone studies in language and expression, based on the principles set forth by Raymond Queneau and primarily employed by the French literary and mathematics group the Oulipo. Each movement of Values contains a poem or a fragment of text that has been manipulated by or interpreted with a certain Oulipian technique or principle. The technique is then translated into a musical process and paired with the text to create self-contained studies in verbal and musical language.
Text
Part I
Forget it, Jake, it’s China
town, down in an earlier
roundoff backhand
spring, summer, winter,
follow the leader
ship packages through Amazon
Rain (Forest, run!)
in Spain falls mainly on the
plain-Jane Seymour’s my friends
with benefits like a glovebox-ing
ring ring ring ring banana
phoneCall of Duty.
Part II
Music is a hidden exercise in arithmetics
where the mind is unaware it is counting.
Part IV
There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave—under the deep deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
No voice is hush’d—no life treads silently,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free.
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox, or wild hyæna, calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,—
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.
LUCY SHIRLEY 