Theatre of Voices/Paul Hillier Harmonia Mundi HMU 807527***

What do these pieces have in common? Luciano Berio's A-Ronne, John Cage's Story, Jackson Mac Low's Young Turtle Asymmetries, Roger Marsh's Not a soul but ourselves, Sheldon Frank's As I was saying, and Cathy Berberian's Stripsody? Paul Hillier thinks they appear to tell stories but avoid getting to the point. I'm not so sure. A much more direct connection is that they avoid the conventions of setting words to music, or writing music that presents and supports a text, and instead set out to make music directly out of words (and some other vocal sounds, too). Cage and Frank are the most direct. Berberian runs the gamut of cartoon bubble texts. Marsh turns to Finnegans Wake, and Mac Low to chance operations. The complexities of Berio's 1974 treatment of a multi-lingual text by Edoardo Sanguinetti, heard here in its original five-voice version, sound surprisingly dated. See url.ie/55ay