9/3/21

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Erin Gee (1974- )

Before the the pandemic forced all learning to shift to a virtual format, my Spring 2020 semester at the Blair School of Music included a series of guest lectures and lessons from several visiting composers. With that came an introduction to a significant quantity of pieces (many of them contemporary) that I had not been aware of before. The topic of this blog post, Mouthpiece 28 by Erin Gee, was one from this smattering that stuck out to me in particular. Written in 2016, this piece belongs to an ongoing series of “Mouthpiece” works which began in 2000 and now represent a majority of Gee’s output as a composer. As the name would suggest, these pieces are mostly written for voice (sometimes accompanied by an assortment of instruments), but more recent ones have also omitted a vocal component while still maintaining a precedented style. This particular addition to the collection is scored for voice, bass flute, bass clarinet, violin, and percussion.

It is this distinct style, however, that sets Mouthpiece 28 (as well as the other works in the series) apart from most other music written for voice. Almost immediately, one will notice how the piece is completely void of any traditional or semantic language for the vocalist. Instead, the performer is called upon to sound out various vowels (which are notated using the International Phonetic Alphabet) and to make intermittent popping, clicking, and shushing noises. There is no text, despite some vowel-consonant combinations resembling familiar words or word fragments from time to time. The effect of this causes the piece to take on a more textural (rather than narrative) focus. In Erin Gee’s own words, “the voice is used as an instrument of sound production rather than as a vehicle of identity.” Yet even as unnatural as these sounds may seem, there is something inexplicably personal and intimate about the eclectic and seemingly endless collection of utterances that the vocalist makes. The rapid and ever-changing succession of noises, many of which are so specific and nuanced that they can only really be achieved at a delicate volume, require the listener to maintain a level of focus throughout the entire piece. Furthermore, all the sounds that come out of the vocalist’s mouth are derived from the most fundamental components of familiar languages, no matter how discombobulated they may be. Perhaps to the unconvinced listener Mouthpiece 28 will seem to be nothing more than unstructured babbling, but I would like to think that many will perceive a humanness in what the voice achieves here, however bizarre it amounts to being.

Beyond what the vocalist is doing in this piece, which itself can continue to confuse a listener even after several listenings, there is also the matter of how the other instruments are integrated into the music. Even though I took plenty of time to walk through the demands on the vocalist alone, it is also important to consider at this juncture the vast array of extended techniques (and instruments, in the case of the percussionist) that is required of the other performers. Everything from flutter tongue, tongue ramming, and pitch bending in the winds to percussive techniques, ricochet, and overpressure in the violin make the instrumentalists sound just as unfamiliar as the voice. Of course, each of these different ‘flashy’ techniques are used rather sporadically, often to accentuate the rhythmic patterns of the piece. For example, Gee will alternate guttural or popping sounds with an interjection from an instrumentalist to form a brief sort of hocket. All this is done in considerably complex rhythmic structures which, despite not being as extreme or virtuosic as the music of someone like Brian Ferneyhough, would demand even a highly trained musician to practice getting everything lined up. To that end, as playful as Mouthpiece 28 may sound to a listener, it is nothing short of intense and demanding (yet rewarding) for the performers.

All of this being said, I think this composition is still very approachable, perhaps even more so than many of the other pieces in this blog series. There is no comforting backbone of tonality, but the piece still finds a way to be satisfying in its own unique way - expectations are denied and (sometimes with little to no forewarning) fulfilled, like when rhythms suddenly line up or a cluster of pitches slides into a unison or consonant harmony. There is no getting around the strangeness of this piece, but listening to it will hopefully open your mind up to how contemporary composers are constantly innovating and finding new ways to communicate with their audience. Below I have linked a video which includes the score of the piece, but I would highly recommend that you also check out the music video, which was the way I first experienced this piece. The interplay between what you see and what you hear form its own hocket, which adds to the amusing mind-bending-ness of Mouthpiece 28. Truthfully, the visual elements of that video really warrant a blog post of their own.