Program Notes

The Music in the “Mouthpiece Series”

I work with a concept I created, called the "super mouth", in which the instrumental sounds imitate and expand the possibilities of the solo vocal sounds. The mouth and voice can make pops/whispers and can sing and whistle etc., but when the entire ensemble becomes like a "super mouth", it can combine the changing "tone", the percussive, and the airy elements of the voice and mix them with similar sounds performed by the musicians, creating a sound world that is more expansive and varied than what a single voice could create alone.

Mouthpiece XXIV

written by Johannes Knapp, artistic director of Collegium Novum Zürich

In the next piece we dive into a completely different sound world, and the word «dive» is to be understood here quite literally. As the Roman numeral in the work's title, Mouthpiece XXIV suggests, it belongs to a large-scale series, in which the American vocal artist and composer Erin Gee explores the sound possibilities of the human mouth with differentiated approaches and techniques. Just get involved with how the sounds change when the percussion instruments are immersed in the aquarium, and what a beautifully subtle interaction develops between the tenor saxophone, the whistling of the percussionist and the glissandi of the diving pipes!

At the beginning of the Mouthpiece series was a piece for solo voice in 2000, which Gee performed first as a graduate student. To date, the series has grown to over 30 works for orchestra, opera, vocal ensemble, instrumental ensemble and string quartet, which have been performed by renowned interpreters from all over the world. Illuminating a basic (musical) idea from ever new angles can be very appealing. We will come back to this below.

Johannes Knapp
Artistic Director

February 19, 2021

Erin Gee (American, b. 1974) 

Mouthpiece I (2000) 

My paintings have neither objects nor space nor time nor anything—no forms. They are light, lightness, and merging, about formlessness, breaking down form. 

—Agnes Martin 

When we study the science of breath, the first thing / we notice is that breath is audible. 

—Hazrat Inayat Kahn 

In the Mouthpieces, the voice is used as an instrument of sound production rather than as a vehicle of identity. Linguistic meaning is not the voice’s goal. 

The construction of the vocal text is often based on linguistic structure—vowel-consonant formation and the principle of the allophone—and is relatively quiet, with a high percentage of breath. 

The Mouthpieces presuppose a state of listening. They engage physiology rather than psychology. 

The construction of the vocal text is relatively quiet, (thus needing amplification) with a high percentage of breath: „lightness, and merging, about formlessness.“ 

Program Notes for the Mouthpiece Series

Erin Gee (American, b. 1974) 

I notate the vocal sounds using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in order to accurately transcribe both the type of sound and the place of articulation in the mouth. The sounds that I use are often remnants or artifacts of phonemes, however, when placed in a non-semantic context, they float in a liminal space with no overt connection to a language. 

In the works for voice and ensemble, the articulatory possibilities of the mouth are often mapped onto the instruments, mirroring and expanding the vocal sounds to form a kind of "super-mouth" that can move beyond the physical limitations of a single vocal tract. Merging the voice with both the instruments and with breath, and repeatedly returning to formlessness through “a more (or less) pronounced utterance of the mouth”. Degrees of pronounced utterance.  This has been the main idea behind the entire Mouthpiece series, which began in 2000 and consists of about 30 works for solo voice, voice and ensemble, choir, voice and orchestra, string quartet, opera and other combinations.  Not pre-meaning, simply never in the direction of meaning.