Meredith Monk (1942-Present)

Introduction
Meredith Monk is an American composer from New York City, New York who's born in 1942. The art she creates spans multiple artistic forms including music, theater, dance, and many others. She mostly is known for her work with vocals and vocal technique, specifically. She is known as a "magician of the voice" and "one of America's coolest composers" from her own website. Her music findings are very interesting, with most of her pieces being very experimental and unnerving.

Work Analysis
The composition i decided to look at was Turtle Dreams from 1983. This a very eccentric piece where the vocals, video, choreography, and background music are all working together to create a specific mood. The background music is playing a very tonal sounding background part, and the video is showing various random seeming images then long shots of the vocalists doing odd choreography along with singing interesting vocal lines that usually do not go along with the music under them. The vocal techniques used sometimes do not even sound like voices, they can sound like sirens and electronic instruments based on how they are altering the voice. The only instance and reference to turtles is the scenes in between the choreography and dancing, these scenes are when the electronic instruments start to experiment with melodic structure. The piece seems to have a form where theres an a section where the keyboard takes the main focus and then the b sections where the vocalist take center stage. In the video the vocalists stares are expressionless, and the vocal melodies seem to have certain themes that repeat over and over many times.

Comparisons
This piece seem just like Stockhausen's piece Oktophonie. These pieces both have a very experimental conceptual nature to them, where they are fleshing out a common concept. It also seems like this piece takes influence from George Crumb's experimental work with vocals. The legacy of Monk's wok is definitely the experimenting with what the human voice can do. The timbre of the human voice is so malleable and can do so much with so little. Without Monk's experimentation we possibly wouldn't know the extent of what the human voice can do.

Observations
I enjoyed this composition a lot, the vocal aspect was very interesting to someone like me who focuses mainly on vocals. Also, the visual aspect of this piece was similar to The Soldiers Tale, where the visual aspect gave the piece life beyond the sheet of music, giving the music a physical form in the visuals and choreography.I makes me want to try using voices in different way, especially in A Cappella music where different timbre that mimic real instruments are always a huge benefit.