Works

Instrumentation (detailed)

Soloists

Voice

Performer(s)

This piece is one of a set of solo pieces, each of which takes as its point of departure some particular characteristic of the instrument/voice being used; there is no intention of exploring all possibilities, nor of writing in a virtuoso way, although this sometimes happens as a result. In the case of the voice Essay, the main starting point was the voice's ability to transpose without any need for new fingerings and consequent renotation. An aleatoric web was created whereby a number of short fragments can be strung together in various possible orders in such a way that the first note of each new fragment is the same as the last of the previous fragment, producing a variety of possible transpositions. Another natural characteristic of the singing voice is a text. In the past, the meaning of a text has always been paramount, the phonetic aspect being used when possible and suitable but in a rather haphazard and ornamental way. The idea was to make the phonetic aspect structural. Consequently, there is no meaning to the text: the sounds play as important a part in the musical structure as the pitches and rhythms, etc. Christopher Bochmann

Work	Type	Date	Organization/Event	Venue	Town	Country	Performers	Notes	Inv Row
Essay VI	Premiere	1999/Feb/12		University of York	York	United Kingdom	Hugo Maia (voice)	Notes

Documents
	Type (+ sub-type)	Cover/edition title Document title	Authors	Referring to	Publisher	Date
	Scores	Christopher Bochmann / Essay VI  Essay VI		essay vi Christopher Bochmann	Centro de Investigação & Informação da Música Portuguesa	2011 1982