The Wikipedia page on pressure management describes aneroid gauges as ”based on a metallic pressure-sensing element that flexes elastically under the effect of a pressure difference across the element…” They operate without the liquid mercury typical of many thermometers, barometers, or similar devices. Yet they are dynamic systems capable of registering the full range of dynamic changes to a pressure system. If to be aneroid is to be devoid of liquid, in Aneroidal the absent liquid is language, but in this absence an alternate world of vocal sounds open up. This composition seeks to dynamically balance this world of tone and noise that the singers produce--even a noisy, unusual vocal technique is used for its harmonic potential, and the purest of singing reveals its inner grit. Chords grow thick and song emerges out of the unvoiced. So if this piece is something of a machine, it isn't a cold, unfeeling one. If it is a gauge on an unconventional vocality, it is also a battery for the singers' energetic sense of discovery as they perform it.
credits
from Ongoing Collected Works,
released August 23, 2017
Premiered by the Bienen Contemporary/Early Vocal Ensemble at NUNC 3, April 22, 2018.
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