USAR02: Music and Technology

REVIEW OF NONA SENSILIA

Gan Tiaw Leong. CCLA03 ["Music And Technology"], University Scholars Programme, National University Of Singapore.

My review is on the performance of the piece Nona Sensilia by the Singapore Youth Choir during their recent concert, SYC lite: Nona Sensilia in the University Cultural Centre. This piece is based on Edward Lear's book entitled The Book of Nonsense and its name was concocted to mean Nonsense. It is the work of local composer Joyce Bee Tuan Koh and was commissioned by the Singapore Youth Choir.

As soon as the performance of this piece began, I discovered that it was very different from any others I have heard before. At first, I struggled to discern what the choir was singing but soon I realized that some of the choir members were just making nonsensical sounds in what seemed like random intervals while others were senselessly repeating the same few lines over and over. At one point in the performance, the phrase "Obsequious Ornamental Ostrich" was repeated so many times that I found myself wonder if the choir was ever going to move on. The choir was presenting phrases from the poem in a combination of singing, talking, humming and high pitch shouting. I was quite put off by this since I could not understand or appreciate what was going on.

So I focused my attention on the computer and MIDI synthesizer keyboard that had been set up on one side of the stage. The MIDI musician was triggering the electronic sounds by playing on the keyboard. Instead of the familiar and beautiful sounds that one would expect from a piano-like keyboard instrument, a host of weird sounds were produced. While most of the sounds produced by the synthesizer were indistinguishable to me, I did managed to pick out what I believe are electronically manipulated voices. Two particular "voices" that were repeated many times caught my attention because of the associations that I got from them. The first sounded like a baby's chuckle and the other reminded me of a moaning or groaning female voice. These sounds only aggravated the weirdness of the whole performance and I started coming up with images of a mental asylum with its patients chattering away incessantly and senselessly.

The electronic sounds constantly interacted with the voices of the choir. The choir's confusing vocal presentation, the strange sounds from the synthesizer and the unusual arrangement of the performers on stage made me wonder if I was missing some important idea that they were trying to convey. According to the programme booklet, there were four speakers situated in the hall and designed to produce a mini-cinematic surround sound effect. During the performance, all the sounds including the singing of the choir appeared to have been mixed and played back through the speakers and I was able to experience the surround effect. The lighting on stage was also used as part of the overall presentation as the lights shifted their focus around the stage and different colours were coordinated to go with the different moods in the music.

One aspect of the piece that I found interesting was the relationship between the choir vocals and the electronic sounds. Initially, I had assumed that the electronic sounds would carry a melody for the vocals to sing in the same way as traditional musical instruments produce the music as an accompaniment to a singer's voice. As it turned out, I think the vocals were as much a part of the "music" as any of the sounds produced by the keyboard. But this fact made me wonder if the "live" choir was really necessary, since the MIDI keyboard would not have any difficulties in performing the vocal parts once the needed sound elements were sampled and stored in the system.

I was also impressed with the amount of control that the MIDI musician had in how the sounds came out in the hall. I think only certain speakers emitted some of the sounds as I could tell that those sounds came to me from a specific direction. This effect made me feel like I was inside the performance area with the choir and the keyboard musician.

Finally I decided that given the "nonsense" nature of this particular work, the best way to appreciate it was just to have an awareness of the musical elements present in the work and the way those elements were created. According to the 3 planes of listening to music we covered in class, this way would be on the sheerly musical plane. This work also reminds me of futurist music, as a futurist piece is a polyphony of sounds. The real difference between futurist music and Nona Sensilia being futurist music use machine noises and have ideals toward urban life attached to them while Nona Sensilia is just about nonsense.

The strange sounds produced by the MIDI system did not sound like any traditional or even contemporary instruments that I know of. Yet, some of them sounded familiar to me. So I did some research online and found a description of Nona Sensilia on the Singapore Youth Choir website. According to the description, the composer had taken the sounds of Asian musical instruments and Singapore patois (local dialects and languages) back to Paris and transformed them into the strange and unearthly sounds in Nona Sensilia. Therefore, the new sounds are the result of Musique Concrete. In this way, she has managed to create a new and unique musical instrument derived from sources familiar to the Singaporean audience.

The concert had an impact on the way I think about music. The yelling and chanting of the choir and the weird sounds coming from the synthesizer were disorientating to me. I cannot understand how the chaotic sounds can be considered as music. I keep wondering how someone learns to appreciate this kind of music. Is there something special to look out for when listening to the music? My preconceptions of music have been challenged by this experience and I think that I am less judgemental towards forms of music I am not familiar with.

In conclusion, I think I will need to expose myself to new musical experiences more often in order to broaden my musical horizons and be able to appreciate more kinds of music.