SCHEDULE

OTHER VOICES. Voice as a Trajectory in My Electroacoustic Practice (2006–2026)

 

The voice – in the multiplicity of its semantic meanings, cultural implications and “shadows of meaning” (L. Berio) – constitutes the guiding thread of this overview of Gianluca Verlingieri’s electroacoustic production from 2006 to the present day. Long interested in the dialectic between logos and phoné, between orality and vocality and their reflections within the technological medium, the composer approaches the voice not as a stable entity, but as a continuously transforming phenomenon.

Through a series of compositional case studies, the lecture traces a trajectory that begins with …like balls upon the floorfor coloratura soprano and live electronics (2006) and reaches the recent Altre voci. A Cathy (2025), for distant mezzo-soprano and artificial choir. The aim is to highlight key lines of development within a personal artistic path that also reflects broader tendencies: from compositional techniques and algorithms (ranging from formant synthesis to generative AI), to the gradual integration of improvisation and hybrid situations, and from spatialization as localization of sound images to its use as a fully dramaturgical device.

Experimental music theatre is also part of this trajectory, as in the multimedia opera Tre movimenti di luce (2015), as well as the DIY experience of the “speaking pipes” in Requiem da Ballo (2018), where a self-built phonatory apparatus combines electronic processing of the live human voice with acoustic resonances of tubular structures.

Finally, the investigation of vocality extends beyond works explicitly involving singers, to include instrumental electroacoustic music, such as IronicOnirico (2010), where the trombone becomes a “Brechtian actor of itself” through real and virtual mutes acting as phonetic generators, and Kaijtos (2024–26), hommage à Kaija Saariaho, in which the recorded memory of the composer’s voice becomes the context for a soundscape that simulates vocal behaviours and gestures. In this perspective, the voice emerges less as an identifiable source and more as a dynamic field of relationships, oscillating between presence and absence, meaning and sound.