Compositions: NEON by Paolo Ingrosso
Updated: 6 days ago
I’ve known Paolo Ingrosso for a long time—ever since I was looking for a classical guitar teacher to help me move beyond my limited self-taught approach. I chose to study with him because, in addition to teaching the instrument, he was at the time a composition student at the Bologna Conservatory. Approaching a classical instrument with a teacher immersed in contemporary music seemed like the perfect way to balance the need for solid foundations with my eclectic musical interests. It was during this period that I discovered his composition Neon, a piece for soprano and electronics in which the performer is a sort voice/body that is both primal and cutting-edge.
We’re discussing it in his apartment, where he uses one room as a studio, in Bologna’s San Donato neighborhood. We had met just a few weeks earlier, right after the lockdown ended. On that occasion, I had presented him with the blog project, we agreed on the interview, and took the opportunity for a walk through the nearly empty streets of central Bologna, devoid of students.
Instrumentation and Field of Inquiry
Neon employs a range of vocal elements—sounds from the lowest register, guttural timbres, and microtonal oscillations—that have become part of the contemporary singer’s repertoire thanks to the pioneering work of composers like Luciano Berio and performers such as Joan La Barbara, Demetrio Stratos, and Meredith Monk. Over the past 20 years, these sounds have also appeared in the “pop” or “world” music of artists like Björk or Tanya Tagaq.
To this set of vocal gestures, Ingrosso’s work adds two key emphases: the use of body percussion simultaneously with phonation, and the amplification of these percussive sounds through a contact microphone. In Neon, the singer produces sounds both with the voice alone and by combining vocal sounds with strikes on the chest and collarbones. These sounds—both percussive and vocal—are amplified in two ways: through a traditional microphone placed in front of the mouth, and through a contact microphone placed on the back, beneath the lungs.
“The interesting thing,” Ingrosso points out, “is precisely the combination of the vibration of the vocal cords—and thus the air in the lungs—with the strike against the chest. If you rely solely on amplified body percussion, even if it is amplified, you get a modest sound. But by combining voice and strikes, you create resonances that the microphone transforms into deeply resonant sounds.”
From the very first listening, I found this piece effective in addressing two issues I often reflect on in my artistic and teaching research: that of voice/body (the voice as a projection of certain aspects of corporeality) and that of song/gesture (song as an extension of the experience of gesture as a category of language). The interview with Paolo Ingrosso gives me the opportunity to present his work while also engaging with him on these very questions. I’ve brought along some of Luciano Berio’s writings, which accompany us in this reflection (1).
Genesis and Structure
Neon was composed in 2006 in Bologna as a final project for the International Music Academy of Milan—now the Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado—and in 2016 it received a mention from the Tempo Reale Association, being selected as part of the Call For Works 3. It is part of a triptych for voice, electronics, and body percussion titled “Tre Graffiti”, inspired by graffiti seen on the walls of the city. The triptych also involves a live electronic drawing artist who modifies the sound projection in real time.
“I was already living in Bologna, but I was finishing my course at the Academy in Milan, with teachers like Michele Tadini, Alvise Vidolin, and Claudio Ambrosini. Truly inspiring people, and a wonderful time in Milan.”
It is a piece in four sections, corresponding to the four letters of the title and the four pages of the score, each lasting about one minute. In each section, the sounds are created starting from the individual letters of the word Neon. Each of the four sections unfolds through a process of repetition and accumulation.
The performance begins with the first section, N: once it ends, the singer moves on to the next section, E, but this performance is overlaid with a recording of the previous section, meaning N again, electronically processed. This pattern continues until the final section, Nr (2), where all three previous sections (N, E, O) are layered together.
So the structure is:
N
E + N
O +E +N
Nr +O+ E+ N
It is a kind of interrupted canon. “Yes, I wrote it like a canon, meaning I composed each subsequent section in counterpoint to the previous ones that were overlaid.”
However, the fact that the full repetition of the canon does not occur—the final section is not repeated—makes the effect of crescendo far more evident than that of circularity.
“We recorded in the Academy’s studio to process the parts used in the performance. On that occasion, we also recorded a complete version of the piece, which is the one you can hear, published by Miraloop Diamonds. One interesting detail is the kind of work we did with the singer, Sara Gamarro. Neon was written precisely by experimenting with her: all the sounds were tried out and defined through a collaborative vocal research process between composer and performer.” This account makes me think of several aspects: first, the compositional practice, clearly evident, for example, in Mozart, of pieces conceived around the vocal capabilities of specific performers. Then, the weight of individuality in the development of contemporary vocality, and finally, the idea of the recording studio as a space for experimentation in sound research (4). The Berio-Berberian duo embodies all these dimensions perfectly. Yet in the case of Neon, there is something more. The quality of this piece, I believe, stems from something more intimate and abstract. Something more ‘internal’.
Enter inside-Pull out
“I was very drawn to the idea of using voice and body. But it was a concert—a piece by Berio: Ofanim—that gave me the key. It’s a piece for children’s choir, female voice, instruments, and electronics—a very beautiful work from the later part of Berio’s life—in which the singer occasionally strikes her chest while singing, creating these very brief effects of altered sound sustain. Berio uses this effect with extreme restraint, and it isn’t even directly amplified. This thing struck me deeply: I found it very dramatic, very theatrical. What struck me most was the acoustic effect. On my own, I began experimenting: I wandered around the house testing things on myself and discovered, to my great pleasure, how much internal resonance there was. How much space there was for these strikes once combined with certain deep sounds like the letter N. So I started thinking about how to pull it out.”
This account made me think of what is reported about the compositional process of Stimmung by Karlheinz Stockhausen (5). This choral piece explores the ability of a vowel to highlight specific harmonics of a sound. It’s said that before composing it, Stockhausen himself experimented with his voice, walking around his home, trying to bring out the harmonics of each sound through timbral changes (6). Stockhausen’s piece, which uses overtone singing in a choral context, is almost in opposition to the idea—characteristic of contemporary vocality—of highlighting the unique vocal personality of the individual. Ingrosso’s piece, in my view, occupies a kind of middle ground in the tension between the personality and impersonality of vocal sound.
“I had to find a way to enter inside and pull these sounds out of the body. The idea of the contact microphone came naturally, as its use is common, for example, in instruments like the guitar or strings. There’s the idea of the microphone almost like a spyglass, probing these internal cavities we experience through sound.”
Voice-Body
The voice, as a sound-production mechanism, connects an interior with an exterior: the interior of the phonating body in relation to the resonant space. These dimensions are managed by a feedback mechanism controlled by listening and proprioceptive sensations. Inside the body, the respiratory, phonatory, and articulation mechanisms work in synergy, but the sound changes in relation to the space in which it manifests. The mechanism controlling the acoustic result—listening—is influenced both by the internal transmission of sound (bone conduction through the singer’s body) and by the transmission that occurs in the acoustic space (airborne transmission) (7). It is precisely the fact that the singer’s listening is dual, and closely tied to proprioceptive sensations, that makes singing a moment of bodily self-awareness through sound.
Ingrosso’s piece highlights the internal resonance component of the voice and turns it into a phenomenon of musical interest.
“In the voice, the body is the instrument, but it is a hidden instrument: this is somewhat the idea of the voice in Neon. The contact microphone, whose use I borrowed from instrumental practice and applied to the body, carries a stronger value that evokes self-exploration.” It reminds me of a doctor’s stethoscope and the idea of the Cyborg (8). More than the physical transmission of sound, it evokes a tactile transmission—how the deaf perceive sound. Stockhausen, too, composed pieces like Mikrophonie I, centered on the electronic treatment of a vibration captured by the microphone (9). “When I was writing this piece, the idea of a watery, uterine sound was very present—like the sounds we might have heard in prenatal life.”
Singing-Gesture
In teaching, I often suggest to students that they approach the performance of a musical phrase as the realization of a gesture. Not simply notes and words, but something more organic whose functionality and expressive value emerges from two aspects: the attention with which one listens to the individual section and the way the body is coordinated to execute it.
The insight I aim to convey—also through a series of examples—is generally well-received. It helps increase concentration, makes each phrase more structured, and above all fosters coordination between breath, posture, sound production, and musical discourse.
Neon is a piece of gestures. It makes audible and visible the fact that the voice is, first and foremost, not something that produces notes but realizes musical gestures.
I read some parts of a Berio essay to Ingrosso: “By gesture I mean every expression of the body formalized into meaning (….). I contrast gesture with sign: it seems to me that in signs, expressiveness must constantly be re-established and agreed upon, tied to the structure of their use, (while) the expressiveness of gestures is implicit and tied to a sense already acquired” (10).
So a sign—for example—can be a note, like C, which assumes its meaning only in relation to the other notes with which it is counterpointed, whereas the sounds that make up Neon are not notes but gestures, elements that immediately evoke a sensation, an autonomous expressive dimension.
“Yes, my idea is that each of these sounds, or—better—gestures, is like a boulder. You can find a boulder on the seashore, but if you take it and bring it home, placing it in your living room, it remains a boulder; you see it right away: with its identity, it can evoke an entire world for you.”
Berio means exactly this when he speaks of vocal gesture:
“For me, gesture is something significant in itself, to be used not only as emphasis in its original context but also capable of being displaced from its context. When I speak of vocal gesture, I am concerned with this displacement” (10).
Berio’s position, as emerges from reading his essay, is dialectical: vocal gesture is expressive insofar as it is in relation to history, to context, and situates itself in the ongoing pursuit—sometimes alternating phases—between vocal development and instrumental practice that characterizes Western music.
But the essential point, at least for today, is another. When Berio asks Pierre Boulez, “What is the voice?” the French composer replies:
“In my view, the voice is like percussion: it has the ability to touch extra-musical fields as well as to integrate completely into music. (….) I believe that our Western tradition has forced the voice into limiting conventions, just as it has done with instrumental practice. In my view, the trend today is to make instruments achieve the greatest possible individuality. (….) There is a tendency today (1972, ed.) to create effects that go beyond the proper musical framework of the composition itself and tend to present themselves as pure effects; they become something that wants to be dramatic in itself. However, this is a characteristic I would not want to deprive either percussion or the voice of” (11).
Neon is exactly this: displacing, within a compositional structure determined by the use of electronics, what Boulez calls the extra-musical elements of voice and percussion. Seeking to investigate the primal vocal and percussive experience in each of us. The electronics make this project possible.
The womb, the voice. The things perceived during pregnancy. Feeling from within and pulling outward, or going inside the body.
(This is a translation of an article in italian: the references are mainly taken from the italian texts I used)
(1) Luciano Berio, Scritti sulla Musica, Torino, Einaudi 2013; Luciano Berio, C'è Musica e Musica, Milano, Feltrinelli 2013.
(2) The last section is “Nr” and not “N,” as it is connected to the next piece in the triptych: “La febbre dell’oro.”
(3) A detailed explanation of the structure and electronic treatment is provided in the attached score.
(4) See Umberto Eco, Il laboratorio Cathy, in Symphonia N° 30 anno IV, settembre 1993 pag. 9.
(5) Robert Maconie, Other Planets, The Complete Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, London, Rowman&Littlefield 2016, pag. 270 e ss.
(6) I heard this story from the bass Nicholas Isherwood during the performance of Stimmung by Voxnova on May 16, 2015, at the San Leonardo Music Research Center in Angelica, 2015.
(7) Sometimes a distinction is made between the osseous pathway, the tendinous-muscular pathway, and the airborne pathway. For simplicity, we will consider two of them: the airborne pathway and the listening experience transmitted through the body.
(8) Donna Haraway: Manifesto Cyborg, Milano, Feltrinelli 2018
(9) See Robert Maconie, Other Planets, The Complete Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, London, Rowman&Littlefield 2016 pag. 231 e ss.
(10) See “Del Gesto Vocale” 1967 ora in Luciano Berio: Scritti sulla Musica, Torino, Einaudi 2013 pp. 58- 70.
(11) Pag. 69 Una polifonia di suoni e Immagini A cura di Angela Ida De Benedictis, in Luciano Berio: C'è Musica e Musica, cit.. Corrisponde alla Puntata V “Mille e Una Voce” del programma C'è Musica e Musica Rai, 1972.
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