to kiss lipless (2025)
Perusal Score
~ This score below is intended for perusal purposes only, and may not be used for performance. To obtain performance materials, please click here. Thank you! ~
Perusal score coming soon!
Text
(from SLEEP WITH ME by Michelle Orsi)
What can I say without lips? My mouth holds too much. At least my fingers will speak for me. At least these keys can break a word open. I promise you these letters will lust with or without us.
What do I contain and what contains me? To contain might as well be to contaminate. Other words for contain: include; take in; embrace; consist of. Contaminate: pollute; defile; taint; infect; spoil. Earlier this evening, my father told me he has pink eye and that his eyes are nearly swollen shut. I half-believe I will acquire pink eye through the phone. Sound is a container, no? It can contaminate too.
I will be drinking coffee. I will wonder if my father is drinking, or sleeping. I will wonder if he has fed his dog yet. I will wonder how to break up with this man for the second time. Will: tend to; have a tendency to; are bound to; are going to; must. Break: smash; crack; split; fall to pieces; fall to bits.
Has the word “contain” started to annoy you yet? It’s annoying me. Such a clunky word. Maybe I’m just tired. Clunky: awkwardly solid. When you wake in the middle of the night does time still move forward? Does it stop? If a hibernating bear wakes, does it die?
Have I thought enough about tomorrow? Will I still be here? (I will be) Will he be? I lied about my lips, before. Remember? I do have lips, I just sometimes pretend that I don’t. Lip: edge, rim, brim, border. To kiss lipless is to surpass liminality. I would like to move without passing through.
General Information
Written For: USC Visions and Voices Series
Text: From SLEEP WITH ME by Michelle Orsi
Written: March – April 2025
Duration: ca. 7’
Instrumentation: high voice + electric guitar + percussion (vibraphone, trap set) + live electronics
Performance History
April 25, 2025: Hannah Rice (soprano), Benjamin Beckman (live electronics), and The Living Earth Show (Travis Andrews [guitar] and Andy Meyerson [percussion]) on the USC Visions and Voices concert series, Cammilleri Hall, Los Angeles, CA (World Premiere)
Program Note
What makes good text-setting? When many composers write a piece of vocal music, they attempt to use the music to "satisfy" or "reflect" the text in "the best way possible" within their compositional language. Those terms are in quotes, though, because those meanings are essentially arbitrary – what makes a particular musical phrase or idea suitable for a textual one (or not)?
This piece attempts to explore that question. The text, selections of Michelle Orsi's poetry from her volume SLEEP WITH ME, defines (or redefines) certain words used within the poems themselves. In these moments, I tried to create a sequence of highly-structured musical gestures that capture, to the best of my ability, every subtle shade of meaning of each individual word (what is the difference between "rim" and "brim"? "tend to" and "have a tendency to"? "fall to pieces" and "fall to bits”—and how can these differences be captured musically?). This falls against a backdrop of deeply emotionally charged poetry about a character's relationship with her father, set to musical material that is intuitively composed—usually rhapsodic and freeflowing. I am wondering: how can concrete words create abstract ideas? How can concrete ideas be transmitted by words that are so abstract? What is musical meaning? What is meaning itself?