Theorizing Voice in Performance: György Ligeti's "Aventures"

Author(s): Zeynep Bulut

Source: Perspectives of New Music , WINTER 2010, Vol. 48, No. 1 (WINTER 2010), pp. 44-
64
Published by: Perspectives of New Music

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23076407

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Perspectives of New Music is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to Perspectives of New Music

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Theorizing Voice
in performance:
Gyorgy Ligeti's Aventures

Zeynep Bulut

Voice: is it of
medium a substance? Is body?
a particular it personal property?
Is it an Is it
assemblage of a"fl
pa
sounds? Performance: is it the contingent, the immediate, th
ated by the condition of here and now, which is lived only on
Peggy Phelan posits?1 What is the intersection of the phen
operation of voice and performance? This paper aims at openi
cussion about these questions by looking at (1) the phenom
sound as the kernel of the voice, (2) the notion of "performan
the heart of the everyday operation of the voice, and (3)
Ligeti's Aventures as an example of this intersection of voice
formance in its use of the everyday voice.2

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Theorizing Voice in Performance

Sounds of the Voice . . .

Freudian psychoanalysis reminds us that the primarily protective and

sensible environment of the womb is sound; the mouth is the first
organ of pleasure; and mother's voice is the first recognizable sound
for the baby. This situates the mother's womb as the state of origin
the home, the place of attachment. The place of detachment then con
structs and is constructed by the external, the foreign. To understand
the sounds of the voice, I read the relationship between sound and
voice with reference to these notions of the home and the foreign, and
the oscillation between them. What might it mean to associate voice
with the home, the place of intimacy and attachment, and sound with
the place of detachment, with the foreign? Gaston Bachelard's defin
tion of the "house" in Poetics of Space helps us imagine such
connection between voice and home, and sound and foreign:

The house, quite obviously, is a privileged entity for a phe

nomenological study of the intimate values of inside space . . . for
our house is our corner of the world. As has often been said, it is
our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word. . . .3

The house extends the inside to the outside, and in return,

accommodates the outside within the inside. Similar to house, voice is
an interior space that extends the inside to the outside, and vice versa.
It is the very personal, reserved space that finds its place in the body.
Body is the house of voice. It preserves the interiority. However body
is not simply "the entity of the intimate values of inside space," as
Bachelard would argue. It is rather the portal. The inside space is
voice. Opening the portal, voice stretches the "intimate values" to the
outside.
What is the engine of this stretch? Bachelard posits "the binding
principle in this integration is the daydream."4 Interrupting the every
day continuum, the daydream suggests a space between appearance
and disappearance. The question is how we daydream, how we let
ourselves be interrupted. What is the glue between different images, or
snapshots that we fantasize? I suggest "sound" as a potential answer.
As distinct from voice, sound is experienced like a daydream, like an
imaginary interruption. Its physical and phenomenal qualities generate
the oscillation between appearance and disappearance. The source of
sound is almost always invisible. Even if we see how one generates a
certain sound, we cannot pinpoint where the sound is. Sound
disseminates. Even if we localize or position a certain sound, we cannot

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
46 Perspectives of New Music

control its fluidity and depth. Sound is not disc

comes and goes. Its source is imaginary. Its very ex
another. Sound can exist only if it resonates with
physically needs a surface to be heard. Sound is th
degree of proximity.
The human body can be considered a surface th
various sounds with a certain level of proximity. W
feel ourselves close to sound, since it is the very p
and sensible medium, as mentioned above. Yet how
a sound, give it a name? Sound partially remain
attribute a certain meaning to a certain sound base
Listening to a sound is an act of imagination. This is how the
experience of sound makes us vulnerable to "home" and "foreign"
lands in a Freudian sense.5
As a "fleshed" sound, or as sounds of a particular flesh, voice bridges
self and the other, and facilitates a kind of oscillation between them.
The phenomenon of the voice suggests pure interiority. Its existence
seems like a mystery, but indeed, the very existence of a particular
voice comes into being with exteriority. Voice engages a relation, a
liquid conversation between one and the other. The sounds of the
voice make this conversation fluid and enigmatic. Functioning like the
filter of various bodily sounds, voice becomes the "house" of the
sounds. Yet still as sound, voice addresses a foreign land. It is both
here and there. Being here and there, the continual conversation or the
oscillation I suggest resists and transcends the duality of the self and
other.6

mr Voice as a Problem, Along with mtself

My voice is an invisible part of my body. I have vocal chords in my

throat. When I speak, they come closer and vibrate together. A voice
can resonate around and within my nose, around and within my chest,
around and within my head, around and within my stomach. I have
voices that I produce by breathing from different spots of my body.
Are these voices my voices? How does the sound that is generated in
my body become my voice? My voice and my body are problematic.
They are exposed to other voices and other bodies. My voice becomes
my voice due to its thrown appearance to the others' voices and bodies.
I use thrown to indicate the conditional existence of my voice in a Hei
deggerian sense.7
In Being and, Time, Heidegger introduces 'thrownness' as a mode of
being in the world, and thus, as an existential potential of Dasein,

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Theorizing Voice in Performance

being-there. As he argues, human beings are "thrown" into the already

existing world. The metaphysical realization and transformation of the
self is possible with the material existence of the world. Through
"thrownness," the material becomes the immaterial, being in here
becomes being there. I suggest that every time I throw my voice, I
reach the other's body with a physical echo of my body, whereby the
other is stimulated to respond. Thereafter the potential exchange
between us is not simply physical anymore. This bodily extension is
also imagined. My voice transcends my body and makes it vulnerable
for change, for being there. Nevertheless, my voice does not fully leave
my body. What remains after being thrown?
When my voice leaves my body, what remains is sound. The
immanence8 of my voice is a particular empty space that is filled by
various remainders, by other sounds. Self-realization of my voice is
possible with the transformation of the immanent voice. This
reinforces my voice as a temporal and spatial project. Since the
encounter of the other is temporal and spatial, the being of my voice
turns into becoming.
Thus my voice: (a) incorporates the other's voice as a temporal and
spatial being in the Heideggerian sense; (b) resists the other's voice
and itself when it's thrown against the other's voice; and (c) transcends
its embodied presence when it penetrates into the other's body as a
temporal and spatial being.
Sound provides the potentiality of resistance and transformation of
my voice. It challenges the gravity of my body via its weightless,
temporal and spatial presence. It makes possible my voice's travel in
and out of itself, and thus activates the otherness of the other, the
third. How does sound turn my voice into an incomplete project? The
quality of continual transformation makes sound inadequate,
inconsistent, interruptive and incomplete. Sounds do not operate as
entities. They flow as atomic vibes, as liquid fragments. They are part
of their physical context, while altering the materials of the same
physical context. Thus there is no pure sound. Sound is almost always
contaminated with its environment. The presence of sound is
"approximate,"9 as Don Ihde reminds us. "Sounds are first experi
enced as sounds of things,"10 writes Ihde. As hearers, we make sound
attach to a source. This is why sound calls for being's act of
imagination, and accommodates a kinesthetic process, within which we
transfer optic representations and tactile experiences into abstractions.
As sound, as series of sounds, my voice is imagined, and imaginary.

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
48 Perspectives of New Music

What Mr Voice Does: The Role of the Everyday in the Construction

of Mr Voice

My voice performs everyday. It speaks with different volumes. Its tone

is changing with my bodily postures and movements. My voice oper
ates as a powerful medium. When it says what it says, it is hard to take
it back. It resists against the self. It never gives up. It speaks my body,
and through my body. It responds to other external bodies. It might
be subversive, as it performs everyday. How does everyday reproduce
my voice as a transformative and performative space?
The very notion of "performance" is embedded in the discussion of
the everyday. Everyday is the spot where we can explore the
phenomenal and operational intersection between performance and
voice. To situate both performance and voice as existential functions, I
suggest tracing Heidegger's notion of "the everydayness of Dasein.'"
Situating Dasein in its everydayness, Heidegger first introduces "who
Dasein is." How is Dasein—'being-there'—related to its everyday
environment? Heidegger marks a difference between these two
questions:

Dasein is an entity which is in each case I myself; its Being is in

each case mine. . . . The question of the "who" answers itself in
terms of the "I" itself, the 'subject', the 'Self. The "who" is what
maintains itself as something identical throughout changes in its
Experiences and ways of behaviour, and which relates itself to this
changing multiplicity in so doing.11

Heidegger brings up Dasein as an entity. However, everyday Dasein,

in his terms again, is an entity vulnerable to its environment, as it is
changing through the environment. As he argues, "I" is not a closing
entity, whereas its "givenness" is "reflexive." "I," as a layer of Dasein,
does not present a static kernel that possesses a well-defined
composite. Self operates as a space to welcome the dynamics of its
surrounding, whereby it provides a form of being here and there. The
existence of "being-there" is unconcealed by "being-here." The
confrontation of Dasein with its environment refers to "being-here."
Dasein "finds itself' in being-here, as Heidegger puts it: "Dasein finds
'itself proximally in what it does, uses, expects, avoids. . . ,"12 Here
and now determines "being-there." Here and now situates the actions.
In exchange, the actions of being frame here and now.
The locus of performance is based on these actions of here and now,
which cannot be understood without the "state of with." Performing,

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Theorizing Voice in Performance

as a mode of being, includes always another, either explicit or implicit.

While theorizing the term 'performance,' Richard Schechner
concentrates on "Play, Game, Sports, Theater and Ritual,"13 as shared
activities. These are involved in "everyday rituals" or "Interaction
Rituals.'"14 Schechner denotes the commonality between these
activities as such:

(1) a special ordering of time; (2) a special value attached to

objects; (3) non-productivity in terms of goods; (4) rules. Often
special places—non-ordinary places—are set aside or constructed
to perform these activities in.15

The "non-ordinary" space, time, actors and flow of actions create the
notion of "event," or a "happening" in Allan Kaprow's terms. Schech
ner highlights the particular procedure of these events. Why are these
events considered as 'performative?' What is the promise of the 'perfor
mative?' What is performance? It is difficult to answer these questions
in a definitive way. It seems like performance unconceals the irony
between the non-ordinary and the ordinary. Performance captures a
snapshot or a moment of the ordinary, and recontextualizes that
moment within a non-ordinary setting so as to 'reveal' the forgotten,
or to reconstruct the lived and the living. Performance sorts a discrete
fragment out of the accustomed, which transforms and potentially
transgresses the accustomed itself. Performance voices daydreams. It
insinuates role-playing, the theatricality of everyday life. Thus perfor
mance repeats everyday life. It mimics the mimicry. Copying the copy,
performance marks a difference, pushes the ordinary forward, and turns
the ordinary into the non-ordinary.
The boundaries of the ordinary and the non-ordinary are, of course,
socially processed. We reproduce, "meditate" and "exercise" the
ordinary and the non-ordinary. We internalize the socially approved.
Foucault's notion of "technologies of self' tells us how we "exercise"
and "meditate" the normalcy through our bodies on the one hand,
and how we can resist and transform the normalcy through our bodies
on the other hand.16 How does voice operate within this picture? What
becomes legitimate, more legitimate, and what becomes more
subversive by using our voices?
Everyday voice speaks through two layers: inner voice and outer
voice. Inner voice can be associated with conscience, which functions
as filter, and as common sense, as the voice of the other. Conscience
addresses a reference to soul that is the continually changing
immanence, which marks a difference from the material existence.

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 20u, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
50 Perspectives of New Music

Inner voice is neither fully vocal nor fully vocalized

the immediate, and immediately saying. Outer v
hand, is what is manifest, what can be more associated with
consciousness rather than conscience. Outer voice says out loud. It is
shameless to the degree to which inner voice is ashamed. This does not
indicate that inner voice always directly says the truth. On the contrary,
inner voice is the one, which preserves the ambiguity: the uncanny
vocalization of the 'good' and 'evil,' of the conformist and the
resistant, of the imaginary and the real, of the latent and the actual.
Inner voice then evokes the potential for the subversive. Outer voice,
which is pushed and pulled by the inner voice, attempts to hide this
ambiguity. Outer voice is the voice of face, vocalizing the social mask,
the mediated soul, the "exteriority" as Lévinas would put it.17 Yet
inner and outer voices are essentially intertwined.
The inner and outer voice cannot be separated, as body and soul
cannot be separated. If the soul can be easily expelled as the constantly
divine entity from the body, the self would be consistent, static and
timeless. But the self is dynamic, contested, conflicting and changing.
Is it that the more we exercise, the more we live, the more we find the
soul, and the more we protect the soul? Or the more we exercise, the
more we live, the more we fall apart, and the more the soul
disseminates? How does the coexistence of the inner and outer voice
enable us to perform our souls?
Soul does not denote a solid ground. There is only breath. There is
only the air that comes with the breath. Soul is imagination that come
with the breath with the air. It is the traveling spirit that insinuates
imagination, and movement of imagination. Spirit travels throug
everyday. The non-separation of the inner and outer voices generates
particular "spirit," a particular state, which is both material and
immaterial. The non-separation then leads to an extension, a struggl
of pull and push, which (1) brings the resistance between the inside
and the outside; (2) multiplies the being of the being through th
movement of sound; (3) makes the body vulnerable to imaginatio
and vocalization of the imagination; (4) offers a kind of travel in th
air; (5) constructs a non-linear time cycle between being-here an
being-there with its imaginary presence; (6) makes the being speak and
act; (7) interrupts and liberates the fixity of being with its tempora
and spatial existence; (8) opens the existential project of the being to
the mobility of everyday. This is how the poetry of the everyday voic
arrives.

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Theorizing Voice in Performance 5 I

The Everyday Voice in György Ligeti's Aventures

György Ligeti's Aventures18 (1962) offers a medium to realize the

everyday voice. As such, Aventures can be imagined as series of son
interventions to make the audience retrieve its own bodily sounds. Th
piece amplifies the bodies as performative bodies of the everyday, an
the performative bodies as sound boxes.
Aventures is for three singers (soprano, alto, baritone) and seven
instrumentalists (piano, flute, horn, percussion instruments that ar
mostly everyday objects such as paper bag, wooden furniture, etc.,1
violoncello, double bass, harpsichord) based on an alphabet of
phonemes that emphasizes the production of vowels, consonants, an
vocal gestures. Written for voice, Aventures attempts at a made-up
language. The composer aimed at destroying the language and
exhausting the possibilities of vocal sounds through the excessive us
of vowels and consonants, not tied to words. For each instrument, th
score explains Aventures' alphabet with detailed performance
instructions. Creating a new language, Ligeti attempts to destroy th
possibility of a meaningful text, and to work on the texture of the
voice as an assemblage of sounds in relation to the musical possibilitie
(such as timbre, dynamics, rhythm, etc.) of other instruments.
This language reciprocated by the instruments and the voices,
changes our expectations of listening, and our perception of hearing
the human voice. At the very beginning of the piece, flute, horn
violoncello and double bass generate a sustained noise that resembles
to the singers' breathing sound and vocalization of "h." Example 1
demonstrates this resemblance, which helps us to proximate the sound
of the voice to the sounds of the instruments, and to hear the human
voice as "sound" before and beyond a meaningful word.
Similarly, as seen in Example 2, horn, percussion, violoncello and
double bass punctuate the voices with short staccatos, and open the
space for the audience to hear the vocal gestures as distinct. This lead
us to following the voices' conversations as reverberations. Ascendin
or/and descending, discontinuous or/and continuous, both instr
ments and voices reinforce, limit, control, but nevertheless transform
each other. Mirroring one another's voices, singers generate vocaliza
tions whereby we hear one singer's voice as an echo of the other. Eve
though the voices have distinct origins, vocalizations resulting from a
echo reveal how the individuation of each voice is indeed fed by the
exchange between the voices. This is the moment where we decod
the hidden mechanism of Aventures1 musical language. We become
familiar with the playful, imitative, and repetitive patterns of the voices.
Example 3 clearly exemplifies this effect. It demonstrates how the

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
52 Perspectives of New Music

baritone parts are later echoed in the soprano parts,

the same group of phonemes (see m. 42) sung by alto
the sopranos (see m. 43).

EXAMPLE 1

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Theorizing Voice in Performance

·» 4 ».ν·»*·»

níui-e*

•»it.
(«ϋΜι.
Ot>M #<â^

EXAMPLE 2

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
54 Perspectives of New Music

(AtrlM <rf«t I» · ·*»λ»»«·4

Ci c^l 4+>K*4trmij

Wei· .
Í·»* ΐΜ ·;ι·-νν

«>«*

?M 7·#* >*t
(«nOlk· mdtkHfC
kAM|(·^/
i*r 8·'·^ ée% JL£
"> ··» *.'ιΜ mur
U ΛΛΤ

K4«« 4*t»w T#v

*1» «ft »/κ (ih'tlf*
X*ft '/S *»« +>Hyj0.
tJt*.,
I« Γμ» «·'.·» ft Ivf U.'m· (».iAhfUtf (> «.f
V»-· Ac* ϊί»··ν , ·Μ4ρ ·Λμ^ w**

EXAMPLE 3

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Theorizing Voice in Performance

Though the word "aventure" means chance and adventure, these

patterns encourage us to hear the phonemes as individual units to a
certain degree, within certain durations, without being carried away by
an unknown adventure. This limitation creates the vocalization of
resistance both in and out of Aventures. We encounter such resistance
with the baritone's extreme vocalizations. Example 4 depicts the
sudden breaks in the vocal dynamics, and the vocal acrobatics, with
exaggerated jumps in the pitched voice. Ligeti notes in his instructions
that performer is here asked to "break conversation." It is perhaps
worthwhile to translate "breaking conversation" into "creating
resistance against conversation" or "deliberately being alienated by the
hidden language of Aventures."
The break from conversation, however, prepares the break from
silence. The solo baritone part is followed by the whole ensemble's
response. As seen in Example 5, the crowded texture generated by the
instruments and the vocal ornamentations resist against the previous
solo's resolutions.
The sonic texture of such resistance extends the inner tension to the
outer space, to the audience, whereby we attempt at making sense out
of no sense. Who transforms the resistance then? In other words, who
leads the adventure of Aventures? The answer: we do, as audience, by
responding to Aventure/ language in an empathie way, without fully
understanding, without fully translating, but with a bodily thought. We
do not necessarily translate sounds into semantic signs. We let them
enter our bodies as physical sensation. We then replace the non-sense
with a personal memory of embodiment. Take one of the vocal
gestures in the piece, the laughter pattern. Do we laugh like that? How
does my own laughter sound? Can somebody repeat my laughter?
How does "my" body sound? The resistance derives from the sound
mirror20, from hearing one's own body as an echo of another's body.
The sound mirror is here the Freudian uncanny. It brings both
tangible and intangible oscillation between the listener and the
performer by encouraging the listener to stretch his body towards the
performer's body, and by pulling the listener into a unique space
where his familiarity with his own bodily sounds becomes unfamiliar
with the proximity of a stranger's bodily sounds.
Aventures' language thereby stretches both physical and mental
limits of the audience. This extension pushes us to be aware of our
own performative bodies. We exchange our bodies through listening,
the edge where we encounter self and the other, the edge where we
experience our own bodily sounds, and our voices as the very
assemblage of these bodily sounds. We stop taking the voice for

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
56 Perspectives of New Music

granted. We start to hear both physical and psych

voices. This is how Aventures helps us understand
voice and performance as "speaking body."

. 5«.»ta.
] 30-35
5»». —li· * 4+* wrk«r.y ,Ce«wfj«W·!»· ^liliUiA * fcbr«ci.«Ln<4 f
MM* |i«iii«i*4 **>à «f*»« wCcWtC^« kri«j·»^. Jbhr ^ n¿(
««iff At««».

fcUnjc» Uum

(Vfc,Ct:«U

muz4" .,.t# f"'"

Φ "»Μ·
p%4 *· ··· TeW* ÊU

EXAMPLE 4

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Theorizing Voice in Performance

2_ Alltgro aopasscono-to 0 Θ
j mi· ι» #—lV . «-ι ''<0
-τ*J· 5<·5ί s««»^3-s"4^«:« „
m

raw

j:Sj>" r¿[

¡a^JEiS

¡ete
¡f .,

•»ir AHM , t*<

<Hr a»« ·»* J

EXAMPLE 5

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
58 Perspectives of New Music

Conclusion

In this essay, I have attempted to read the voice within the p

nomenon of performance, within the act of saying and doing, and r
performance within the phenomenon of voice, within the act of us
voice to perform oneself. I situate the notion of everyday voice
speaking body, and speaking body as the intersection of voice and p
formance.
Speaking body speaks through sounds, not simply through words. It
liquidates the established use or significance of our discursive
expressions, facilitates the immediacy of physical movement, and leads
us to act in front of others. Dealing with the physical, imaginary, social
limits of musical language, contemporary music addresses a certain
vocal aesthetics that tends to amplify the speaking bodies. It is
therefore necessary to open this particular aesthetics towards a
discussion about the everyday voice. To comprehend the operation of
the everyday voice in resonance with the speaking body, here I suggest
looking at the phenomenon of sound more closely and deeply.
Ligeti's Aventures helps us explore the phenomenal qualities of
sound at the heart of the voice. The sounds of the Aventures' voices
introduce us to the "remainders," to the "other sounds" of my voice.
The other sounds fill the empty space, and help me find the
immanence of my voice. Friends with gravity, with the physical
movement of sound, they transform my voice into an assemblage of
corporeal sounds. Thereby the sounds of the Aventurei voices
highlight the intersection of voice and performance as the speaking
body. Tracing such speaking bodies in the piece, I argue that
Aventures crystallizes the conceptual background, acoustic environ
ment, and sonic moments of the everyday voice.

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Theorizing Voice in Performance

Notes

1. In The End of Performance, Peggy Phelan draws the phen

boundaries of performance, as "here and now." This is h
qualifies performance as "lived only once." Peggy Phelan, T
of Performance, ed. Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane (New York
York University Press, 1998).

2. I use the word "performance" in the context of performa

ory. A cross-disciplinary epistemology, performance theory ur
to question the term "performance" as an experiential, oper
and existential mode of doing and being. The term then inv
to explore the physical, phenomenal, and cultural constitu
the human body and self, refigure the engine of the huma
and self as practice, and situate these constituents and pract
particular social context. I apply to performance theory, si
temporary vocal music owes its aesthetics to a cultural mom
which the human body is explored as a site of negotiation b
the personal and the social. Inherited from the historic
garde art movements such as Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism
nese Actionism, Happenings, Fluxus Events and Judson
Theatre, contemporary music employs bodily thought, sou
actions, encourages experiential knowledge as the heart of o
ical thought, and makes us aware of the immediate pr
performative attitude, and subversive potentials of the su
Here "performative" is a key term. As indicated in critical
the term "performative" derives from "performative utte
which was first pronounced by British philosopher J. L. A
Austin later explains the components of performative utter
"locutionary act," "illocutionary act" and "perlocutionar
that introduce speech as action. Situating the malleable na
language, Austin's book How to do Things with Words exp
performative utterance as speech act. David Macey. The Pe
Dictionary of Critical Theory (London: Penguin Books
295; J.L. Austin, How to do things with words (Cambridge:
University Press, 1975). "Speech act" guides us to search fo
elasticity, contextual occurrence and contingency of the di
itself. For instance Judith Butler's famous work, Gender T
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, appropriates Aust
formative utterance" for gender constructions. Butler dra
attention to how we "perform" the feminine or masculine
speech act, while embodying particular actions in everyday

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
60 Perspectives of New Music

assuring these actions as open to social engineerin

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of
York: Routledge, 1990). Likewise, various think
who write about performance such as Allen Weis
Diana Taylor, Amelia Jones, Susan Leigh Foster u
embodied actions in everyday life lead us to acquir
both empirical and discursive knowledge. My inte
human voice in performance and vice versa follow
path.

3. Gaston Bachelard, "The House," The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria

Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994): 3-4.
4. Ibid., 6.

5. Freud's book, The Uncanny, marks the definition of the uncanny as

a continual oscillation between the home and the foreign land.
Freud here draws our attention to the "semantic content" of the
German words unheimlich (strange, unfamiliar) and heimlich
(homely, familiar, not strange). Moving from the literal meanings
of the word, he decodes the notion of uncanny as a combination of
the familiar and the unfamiliar. Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny,"
The Uncanny, trans. David McLintock (New York: Penguin Books,
2003): 121-160. Similarly, in The Legend of Freud, Samuel Weber
reiterates this definition. Weber indicates Freud's reference to
E.T.A FIofFman's story, The Sandman, in which a young boy
named Nathaniel is afraid of losing his eyes when he is told that the
Sandman would blind him. Freud interprets this fear in relation to
the castration complex and father image. The way Weber appropri
ates this story, however, highlights the role of the sound in
multiplying the father image. Weber tells us, when Nathaniel closes
his eyes (to protect his eyes from blinding), he only hears the
sounds of the footsteps through which he imagines his father as a
constantly changing body that makes his own body vulnerable to
contact. Psychoanalytically speaking, sounds of the footsteps then
give flesh to the fear of "being blinded," or "being eaten up" by
the father image. Samuel Weber, "Uncanny Thinking," The Legend
of Freud (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000): 1-35.
6. Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception and The Vis
ible and the Invisible exclusively deal with the duality of self and the
other. Both argue the immediate presence of the other for self, and
formulate transcendence as the transformation of one's self
through the other. Accordingly, the question is not one and the
other, but what is in-between, the third that changes self. Maurice

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Theorizing Voice in Performance 61

Merleau Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alpho

(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968). Phenom
of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (New York: Humanitie
1962).

7. Being's active participation with its outside constitutes b

This active participation produces authenticities, the cont
that we are thrown to. The exchange between the sel
other is located within these contingencies. The exchange
complete nor discrete. There is always a remainder within
cess. As multiplied in and through everyday, the rem
becomes unknown. This is an opening to the outside, to
nerable third, which goes beyond self and its other. The v
third indicates the other of the other, which is potentia
ness. The thrown insinuates the otherness of the other.

8. In The idea of Phenomenology, Husserl indicates "immanence" as an

intrinsic part of the self, which assumes that there is a degree of
"self-sufficiency," and which draws the lines between the self and
the other. This also posits that there is transcendence, "a direct
intentionality" towards the other. Here I explore this
"immanence" and "transcendence" of the voice. Edmund Husserl,
The Idea of Phenomenology, trans. Lee Hardy (Dordrecht; Boston:
Kluver Academic, 1999).

9. Don Ihde, Listening and Voice (Athens: Ohio University Press,

1976): 58.

10. Ibid., 59.

11. Martin Heidegger, "Being-In-The-World As Being-With And

Being-One's Self. The 'They,'" Being and Time, trans. John Adac
quarne and Edward Robinson (New York and Evanston: Harper &
Row Publishers, 1962): 150.
12. Ibid., 155.

13. Richard Schechner, "Approaches," Performance Theory (London

and New York: Routledge, 1988, 2003): 8.
14. Erving Goffman discusses these "everyday rituals" as the mechan
ics of social interaction. Erving Goffman, "On Face-Work: An
Analysis of Ritual Elements in Social Interaction," Interaction Rit
ual (New York: Anchor Books Doubleday & Company, 1967): 5
47.

15. Schechner, "Approaches," Performance Theory, 8.

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
62 Perspectives of New Music

16. Michel Foucault, "Technologies of the Self," Tech

Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H
Gutman, and Patrick H.Hutton (Amherst: The Uni
sachusetts, 1998): 16-50.
17. Immanuel Lévinas, Totality and Infinity: an essay
trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne Un
1969).
18. Like his contemporaries, Ligeti was interested in constructing a
certain musical language, which transgresses the limits of verbal
language, and which reveals the physical and spatial potentials of
sound.

19. Percussion instruments are divided into two groups: (1) elastic
bands, book, cushion, wooden furniture; (2) paper bag, suitcase,
guero, side drum, emery paper, xylophone, glockenspiel. György
Ligeti, Aventures (Frankfurt, London, New York: C.F. Peters,
1964): 9.
20. Here sound mirror indicates both a physical and a metaphysical
echo between the bodies. I use the term in a post-Lacanian psy
choanalytic context referring to Didier Anzieu's explanation of the
concept. Anzieu examines sound as the primary "audio-phonic"
skin for the baby, and then urges us to think about the possibility
of a "sound mirror" that is inclusive of the mother's voice and
bodily noises. With her notion of "acoustic mirror," Kaja Silver
man addresses the significance of sound as well. Nevertheless she
theorizes acoustic mirror not as a physical and metaphysical appa
ratus but as a discursive one in a Lacanian sense. Looking at the
use of the female voice in Hollywood cinema, Silverman suggests
sound as a site of projection and fantasy. As such, sound mirror is
different from acoustic mirror. Didier Anzieu, The Skin Ejjo, trans.
Chris Turner, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989): 157
158; Kaja Silverman, The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psy
choanalysis and Cinema, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1988).

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Theorizing Voice in Performance

References

Anzieu, Didier. 1989. The Skin Ego, trans. Chris Turner. New Haven:
Yale University Press.

Austin, J. L. 1975. How to do things with words. Cambridge: Harvar

University Press.

Bachelard, Gaston. 1994. "The House," The Poetics of Space, trans

Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press.

Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of

Identity. New York: Routledge.

Foucault, Michel. 1998. "Technologies of the Self," Technologies of the

Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther Η. Martin, Huck
Gutman, and Patrick H.Hutton. Amherst: The University of Mas
sachusetts.

Freud, Sigmund. 2003. "The Uncanny," The Uncanny, trans. David

McLintock. New York: Penguin Books.

Goffman, Erving. 1967. "On Face-Work: An Analysis of Ritual Ele

ments in Social Interaction," Interaction Ritual. New York: Anchor
Books Doubleday & Company.
Heidegger, Martin. 1962. "Being-In-The-World As Being-With And
Being-One's Self. The 'They,'" Being and Time, trans. John Mac
quarrie and Edward Robinson. New York and Evanston: Harper &
Row Publishers.

Husserl, Edmund. 1999. The Idea of Phenomenology, trans. Lee Hardy.

Dordrecht and Boston: Kluver Academic.

Ihde, Don. 1976. Listening and Voice. Athens: Ohio University Press.
Lévinas, Immanuel. 1969. Totality and Infinity: an essay on exteriority,
trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

Ligeti, György. 1964. Aventures. Frankfurt, London, New York: C.F.

Peters.

Macey, David. 2000. The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory. Lon

don: Penguin Books.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception, trans.

Colin Smith. New York: Humanities Press.

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
64 Perspectives of New Music

. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible, trans. A

Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Phelan, Peggy. 1998. The Ends of Performance, ed.

Jill Lane. New York: New York University Press.

Schechner, Richard. 1988. "Approaches," Performan

Reprint, London and New York: Routledge.

Silverman, Kaja. 1988. The Acoustic Mirror: The Fem

choanalysis and Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana Univ

Weber, Samuel. 2000. "Uncanny Thinking," The Leg

Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

This content downloaded from

132.174.251.250 on Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:25:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms