My interest in voice draws me into the area between music and language. An area which I see as the coast between words and music, where the grain of language and the fluidity of sound converge. I have wandered in this area since 1995 and my interest has been:
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exploring the simultaneity of sound and meaning within the words in text only works like colline sur livre. Here sound and meaning are inextricable interwoven.
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exploring the intersections of sound and meaning in the interplay with an instrument. Here the e-pont serves as a bridge between pure sound and voice, allowing shades of transparency and occlusion of one or the other.
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exploring the relation between words and music through text-scores and oral transmission. Here words serve as a medium to convert ideas that can not be described otherwise.
colline sur livre (2023 - )
Colline sur livre is an ongoing work to observe and suss the intersections, overlays and dimensions between words and music on the basis of the growing text-corpus colline sur livre. This process is facilitated by a lute and cableless mini-set of electronics, a device that I call e-pont, because it serves as a bridge between words and music.
wippe (2025)
text-publication with Verlag Klingental, Basel, an editor, that features works in the intersection between words and music.
Aus dem Zeltbuch (2023)
was created in co-authorship with cellist Deborah Walker as a related counterpart and to be played in a
programme with Eliane Radigue‘s OCCAM RIVER XXIV.
In the area between music and langage Aus dem Zeltbuch is the incarnation of langage in speaking voice.
The piece unfolds a surface of words-sounds textures in low dynamics on the edge of acoustic
intelligibility. This work is questioning the perception of language in a musical context by creating
bilingual areas of sound. As words and sounds are superimposed they may unclose a sounding path
through narration, meaning and understandibility. extract
a day in july (2023)
co-composition with Stefan Thut
Marianne Schuppe, voice & text
Stefan Thut, cello, pipe, pencil and paper
entrevoix I (2024)
was developed for the duo with singer Stefanie Erni. A list of words in german, english and french serves as a subterrainian element shaping the sounds of the singers without becoming intelligible.
Salz, Lücke, Zelt (2019)
for 8 mixed voices
commissioned by Ensemble Voce, Basel,
slow songs - nosongs (2015 / 2018)
solo voice with lute and e-ponts
der blumen ( 2017)
for any number of voices
notes from the hill (2015/2019)
for voice and one instrument
temps ( 1998)
commissioned by Schweizer Tonkünsterverein
wandern (1995)
co- composition with Willy Daum