Every language has its own intrinsic rhythm. Natural speech patterns and inflection have always influenced music in profound ways, contributing to and perhaps defining "national" musical styles. Likewise, writers are often influenced by the musical, sonic aspect of the words themselves. One thinks immediately of Joseph Conrad and Nabokov writing in English, finding a textural beauty in the language that few native-born speakers could muster.

Although the meaning of texts remained primary, composers in the second half of the 20th century became increasingly interested in the timbral aspects of language--the sounds of the words themselves. The rhythm of language, the sound of words, the spoken voice as a musical component, the blurred lines between speech and music and between sound and meaning--all these issues will be explored on April 22, when the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble presents "Words and Music," a program celebrating the evolving relationship between language and sound.

John Cage Photo by © Susan Schwartzenberg/The Exploratorium, 1987

Perhaps it is natural that a concert like this should begin with the music of John Cage. Cage was a pioneer in so many areas, forcing us to redefine music, noise, sound, and silence. Unsatisfied with conventional sound sources, he began in the 1940s to write pieces solely for unpitched percussion. Eschewing harmony and conventional development, his music of this period relied solely on time as the basis of musical structure. By the 1950s, Cage was experimenting with "chance operations." Heavily influenced by Eastern philosophy, he attempted to use outside, random forces to negate the creator's will or, as he put it in his "Lecture on Something" of 1951, to "change the responsibility of the composer from making to accepting." Speech (1955) is an important work from this period, combining unconventional sound sources and aspects of indeterminacy to fashion a music at the border between sound and language. It is scored for "news reader," reading two different texts, and five performers playing AM radios. Although the timings and relative amplitude of the performances are meticulously notated, the selection of the texts and radio frequencies are left to the discretion of the players, insuring a level of indeterminacy and variation from one performance to the next.

The most "conventional" use of language in our concert is Luciano Berio's seminal work Circles (1960), for mezzo-soprano, percussion, and harp. I've included it on this program because of Berio's extraordinary approach to the setting of the texts. This is one of many of his works written for the great American mezzo Cathy Berberian, Berio's longtime collaborator, muse, and first wife. Vocal music has always been central to Berio's creative output, as a framework for lyricism and as an opportunity for exploration of the sound and meaning of language. Indeed, he himself has spoken of music as a "language of languages." His music is deeply influenced by Joyce and Beckett, and he has set texts of Eco, Sanguinetti, and Calvino. In Circles he finds an ideal collaborator in the work of E.E. Cummings, whose poems afford Berio the perfect canvas to paint his fluid, seamless mesh of verbal and instrumental sounds and allow him to focus on both the semantic and purely sonic aspects of the texts. The circles of the title are reflected on many levels: the ordering of the poems; the relationship between poetry and music, between voice and instruments; even the performers' movements on stage. Circles is perhaps the most elaborate example of Berio's intricate interaction between text, voice, and instruments and is acknowledged as a modern masterpiece.

Juilliard Percussion Ensemble Alice Tully Hall Tuesday, April 22, 8 p.m. For ticket information, please see the calendar.

Composer and trombonist Vinko Globokar (b. 1934) has spent much of his creative output examining the boundaries of music and speech. From 1973-79 he was head of vocal-instrumental research at Ircam. His music, highly theatrical in nature, often requires instrumentalists to speak or sing and vocalists to function instrumentally. In Toucher (1973) he takes a French text (actually a translation of several sections of a Brecht play based on the life of Galileo) and deconstructs it with a percussion accompaniment. The solo performer is asked to choose specific sounds to match various French phonemes, and recites the text while accompanying himself, creating a kind of "super" language of speech and sound.

Joseph Pereira, a member of the New York Philharmonic and a Juilliard alum, is a composer whose work often deals with the rhythm of language. His Recitative (2003), which receives its premiere at this concert, is based in part on concepts of human language by the linguist Noam Chomsky, particularly the idea that languages consist of an infinite number of expressions constructed from a few dozen finite sounds. The piece is scored for a trio of percussionists who play and speak simultaneously. The speaking is improvised, based on a group of indicated sounds taken from the natural sounds of the instruments--lengths, pitch, attacks, inflection, etc. Recitative explores the relationships between meaning and sound, pitched and unpitched instruments, and finite vs. infinite systems.

The other works on the program also look at the relationship of words and music in unusual ways. Ken Hosley's Parting Words (1977) is a setting of Plato's account of the last hours of Socrates before he was put to death, scored for narrator and percussion quartet. Socrates' philosophical musings are set against a backdrop of kinetic rhythmic interplay. Sam Shepard's and Joseph Chaikin's Tongues (1978) is really more of a play than a concert piece: basically a monologue for an actor with a semi-visible percussion "alter ego" who comments on and amplifies the texts musically. This should be a stimulating evening on many levels, and I hope you will join us as the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble explores the nexus of sound and language.

Percussionist Daniel Druckman has been a member of the faculty since 1991.