The Music of Language

Spoken languages are musical. Tonal languages from East Asia and Africa use pitch to convey meaning. Clicking languages from southern Africa use percussive consonants not found in other languages. Constructed languages such as whistled languages from the Canary Islands, and drumming and xylophone languages from Africa are musical-surrogate representations of spoken languages. After a comparison of the musical qualities of these languages, this document will examine how twentieth-century composers have explored the music of language in a way previous Western composers had not. This includes natural languages in the works of Ernst Toch, John Cage, Steve Reich, Vinko Globokar and Georges Aperghis, as well as constructed languages in the music of Kurt Schwitters, Milton Babbitt, Luciano Berio, Cathy Berberian, Stuart Saunders Smith, Adriano Celentano, and Eduard Khil. Unlike previous research of language-inspired music that has focused on individual composers and their works, this document aims to create connections between twentieth-century compositional techniques and to create categories of differentiation between spoken language music.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Musical Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Music

Grantor

Rice University

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Keller, Andrew Joseph

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Brandt, Anthony

• Language
• Music
• Nonsense
• Gibberish
• Text
• Speech

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1911/105975

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.rice.edu:1911/105975