Sofer, Danielle (2017) The Macropolitics of Microsound: Gender and sexual identities in Barry Truax’s "Song of Songs". Cambridge Core, 23. pp. 80-90.
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Abstract
This analysis explores how Barry Truax’s Song of Songs
(1992) for oboe d’amore, English horn and two digital
soundtracks reorients prevailing norms of sexuality by playing
with musical associations and aural conventions of how gender
sounds. The work sets the erotic dialogue between King
Solomon and Shulamite from the biblical Song of Solomon
text. On the soundtracks we hear a Christian monk’s song,
environmental sounds (birds, cicadas and bells), and two
speakers who recite the biblical text in its entirety preserving
the gendered pronouns of the original. By attending to
established gender norms, Truax confirms the identity of each
speaker, such that the speakers seemingly address one another
as a duet, but the woman also addresses a female lover and the
man a male. These gender categories are then progressively
blurred with granular time-stretching and harmonisation
(which transform the timbre of the voices), techniques that,
together, resituate the presumed heteronormative text within
a diverse constellation of possible sexual orientations.
Item Type: | Article |
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Additional Information: | This is a pre-print of the published article. Published article available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/organised-sound/article/macropolitics-of-microsound-gender-and-sexual-identities-in-barry-truaxs-song-of-songs/C736480DA8F1E082495B2900837BDCC9 |
Keywords: | macropolitics; microsound; gender; sexual identities; Barry Truax; Truax; Song of Songs; |
Academic Unit: | Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > Music |
Item ID: | 9627 |
Depositing User: | Dr Danielle Sofer |
Date Deposited: | 04 Jul 2018 10:05 |
Journal or Publication Title: | Cambridge Core |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
Refereed: | Yes |
URI: | https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/id/eprint/9627 |
Use Licence: | This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here |
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