Week 1 Listening

The exclusive use of vocals in J. Desprez’s piece creates a rich, airy timbre. The general panning of the lower voices to the right and the higher voices toward the left helps to establish an atmosphere of being present at the performance of the choir. The independent melodies at times feel overwhelming, but overall mesh well.

Otto Luening’s piece uses hard-to-identify windy sounds with no clear melodic intention. It has a flowing, aimless quality that feels oddly calming. The variation in level and panning of the different instruments only adds to this asymmetric meandering idea.

The active left-to-right and right-to-left panning of the various sounds in Poeme Electronique grab my attention. The sudden instrumentations of the blips and squeaks are a bit jarring. There seems to be a story, but it is too abstract for me to interpret concrete meanings. The piece just seems to have active and less active parts. The human voice may play a large role in the narrative. Maybe the piece depicts a dream or psychological trance.