In his author’s note on Visage (n.d.), Luciano Berio explains:

When I was composing Visage what attracted me, as always, was research intended as a way to expand the chances of bringing nearer musical and acoustic processes, and as a means to find musical equivalents of linguistic articulations… [Visage] is based on the symbolic and representative charge that is carried by vocal gestures and inflections, with the “shadows of meanings” and the mental associations accompanying them. (para. 1-2)

As the above quote demonstrates, one of Berio’s key goals with Visage was to bridge what he perceived to be a semiotic gap between nonverbal vocal gestures and electronic sounds. To do this, he created a piece that employed (over the course of 21 minutes) minimally processed recordings of intense vocal affect, intimately intertwined with electronic sounds. Berio relied on the “representative charge” of the vocal sounds, in their close proximity and sometimes mimic-like relationship to the electronic sounds, to imbue the electronic sounds with similar “mental associations.” However, Kathy Berberian’s strongly emotive vocal gestures convey more than mere “mental associations”; they also communicate physical states, whether real or imagined (Herzfeld-Schild 2011: 132; Mehan 2011: 49). Thus, the electronic sounds not only transmit emotional meaning but also reference to physical sensations, linked to the intense affects Berberian conveys throughout the piece.

As listeners to this “sound track for a play that has never been written” (Berio n.d.: para. 2), we are invited to project physicality onto the vocal and electronic sounds in a way that creates possibilities for empathy with Berberian or an imagined protagonist (Flynn 1975: 388; Hatten 2018: 65). Via this empathetic process, Berio’s Visage illuminates not only the performer’s body but also the listener’s body, blurring distinctions between listener and performer, recording and reality. Typically, this process has gone overlooked in analyses and commentary on Visage, likely due to the Enlightenment-era mind/body dualism that tends to be applied to electroacoustic music, in which the production and reception of electroacoustic works are placed firmly in the “mind” category. After examining the impact of this framework on Berio and others’ writings about Visage, I analyze the piece for aural connections between affective and physical states and demonstrate the processes by which electronic sounds become imbued with physical connotations. Though perhaps unintended, Berio’s use of Berberian’s minimally processed vocal sounds, in close aural relationships with electronic sounds, infuses Visage with complex layers of embodied meaning that invite us to consider our bodily relationship with electroacoustic music.

  The Invisibility of the Body, and Embodied Listening

For most of the twentieth century, Western Classical Music was underwritten by an Enlightenment-era mind/body dualism that prioritized mind over body and asserted that art-music-making and -reception were processes exclusively located in the mind (sometimes expanded to include “spirit” or “soul”) (Cimini 2012: 355; Juntunen/ Westerlund 2001: 205; Pelinski 2005: 1). Electronic music, coming out of this tradition, continued to treat music as though its primary “meaning” were located in the relationships between sounds, recognized through “acts of mental contemplation” (Brown 2006: 40). Particularly because some sounds were entirely mathematically derived, the “score” was often a recording, and the performing body was often a loudspeaker (or loudspeakers), the presence of the body in electronic music-making and listening was typically significantly obscured (Brown 2006: 38; Corness 2008: 21; see also Crossley 2019: 25).

Berio and others’ descriptions of Visage’s composition process demonstrate this kind of disembodied perspective on music. Richard Dudas used Visage as an example of how an electronic composer is a “studio improviser.” While he set the scene with Berio and Berberian “recording and re-recording vocal material in an improvisatory fashion,” he quickly shifted focus to Berio later experimenting with processing techniques, concluding that Berio was an improviser who used studio equipment as his instruments (Dudas 2010: 30). Berberian’s body, in this instance, was treated primarily as a sound source to be recorded, edited, arranged, and electronically modified by the true improviser, Berio. Any improvisatory contributions she may have made were purely sonic, and oriented toward providing Berio with pre-recorded material to which he could apply his electronic compositional procedures.

Berio’s comments about Visage in his text Remembering the Future reflect a similarly disembodied compositional framework. Berio explains that during the period in which he wrote Visage, he “was busy looking for harmonic coherence between diverse materials, in a musical context made of sounds and not only of notes… [he] was particularly involved in developing different degrees and modes of continuity… between vocal sound-families and interrelated electronic sounds” (2006: 18). To draw these connections, Berio gave the example of causing a sequence of “vocal stereotypes” not typically considered part of a musical vocabulary “to interact by the use of combinatorial criteria” involving placement, duration, resonance, articulation, etc. (68). Berberian also described Berio as wanting to work “within a parabola from the failure of communication, through trivial conversation, to serious emotion, and ultimately to song” (Osmond-Smith/ Berberian 2004: 8). In composing Visage, Berio was primarily concerned with finding ways to draw aural connections between socially or culturally disparate sound types. Again, despite an allowance for emotional content, the focus remains in the realm of sounds and their relationships to one another, as interpreted by/in the composer and listeners’ minds—as opposed to, for instance, the physicality required to produce said sounds, or any other physical process related to creating or experiencing the piece (and this approach continues; for a recent example, see Oliva 2019).

Nonetheless, music is, quite literally, physical, and there is a substantial body of music-theoretical, musicological, phenomenological, and neurological literature regarding the role embodied experience plays in listening to and finding meaning in music (Brown 2006; Cimini 2012; Corness 2008; Cox 2001; Cox 2011; Crossley 2019; Dyson 2009; Juntunen/ Westerlund 2001; Leman/ Maes 2014; Pelinski 2005). According to Crossley, “engaging with music often involves an imaginative and embodied empathy” with performers that leads us to mirror in our own bodies the actions we imagine performers are taking to produce their sounds (2019: 28). This embodied engagement with music is typically subconscious, however, as we “focus in and out, mobilizing acquired skills and habits in search of (preferably familiar) patterns” (24). Listeners’ embodied listening is facilitated in part by our “mirror neurons,” which, even in purely sonic contexts, help us to “conceive of an embodied perceptual knowledge of a performer’s [actions and] intentions” (Corness 2008: 23). Rather than a process of merely receiving sounds and making sense of them in our minds, listening is an active, engaged experience of meaning-making that uses all of our senses and draws on our embodied knowledge of the world.

  The Physical in the Emotional

In Visage, Berberian’s intense vocal affect, organized by Berio into dramatic “scenes,” illuminates the embodied components of electroacoustic music production and reception. For example, at 3:21 ( Sound 1 ) and then again at 7:27 ( Sound 2 ), Berio has created a gesture that transitions immediately from distraught shrieking and moaning to sensual laughter, conjoining sounds typically produced from very different psychophysical states. These sudden semiotic shifts gain affective power from listeners’ physical memories and imaginings relating to shrieking/moaning and laughter. One example of an affective “scene” comes from 0:00-1:50, where Berberian enacts a struggle to produce even individual sounds and syllables ( Sound 3 ). This opening, especially Berberian’s vocalizations transmitted through a closely placed microphone, confronts listeners with her physicality in a direct and inescapable way. The effect is complicated and contrasted by later vignettes like ca. 3:45-4:50 ( Sound 4 ), where Berberian casually “flirts” and “gossips” in her chatty non-language, communicating relaxation and affection rather than tension and upset. Though both “scenes” convey a particular closeness with the performer (and her body, real and imagined), the first calls listeners to bear witness to her struggle while the second teases listeners with suggestions of voyeurism and (esp. in concert performance) invites embodied associations listeners might draw from their own experiences of intimacy into the public sphere. Through these “scenes,” Visage encourages listeners to draw empathetic physical associations with Berberian. Whether they relish in these moments or resist them has depended on the listener.

While some have written about the way Visage pulls them into a semiotic maelstrom, the bodily aspect of the sound tends to be either denigrated or overshadowed by the “emotional” qualities of the piece. One critic complained that “[Berberian] found some vocal emissions that come more from the uterus than from the mind,” turning Visage into “an exploration of these ‘under-sounds’” rather than a worthy piece of music for voice and electronics (Eco, as cited in Meehan 2011: 49). Another writer described Visage as welcoming listeners to “the pleasures of eavesdropping upon intimate conversation in an unfamiliar language [and then inviting listeners] to endure the voice’s raw emotional import unmediated by specifics of vocabulary and grammar” to the point of becoming “disturbing,” as they explore “the border between pleasure and pain” (Osmond-Smith/ Berberian, 2004: 8). Though Osmond-Smith references the physical states of pleasure and pain, these feelings are subsumed within the “raw emotional import” of the voice.

Composer George Flynn also found the vocal gestures in Visage “disturbing,” and for similar reasons. For Flynn, Visage “invited [the listener] into a teeming world of memories, moods and emotions, expectations, reaction, and reconsiderations” in an immediate, “unavoidable” way (1975: 388). And still, Flynn’s vivid description of listeners’ experiences focused on mental processes at the exclusion of physical responses. Richard Causton went even further in this direction, declaring that “the turbulent events in [“the dramatic character’s”] mind are mapped directly onto those of the audience…” (1995: 19). For Causton, all of the sensations involved in experiencing Visage seem based in the psychological processes of the “dramatic character,” mapped onto audiences’ mental landscapes as Berberian’s voice “forces sympathetic resonances in [their] minds” (19). Osmond-Smith, Flynn, and Causton all describe Visage as a play of emotions, for the “dramatic character” as well as for listeners. While they recognize empathetic listener responses, they overlook the physical-empathetic responses Visage can evoke.

As studies about embodied music-making and listening have proliferated, however, scholars have begun to acknowledge at least the presence of Berberian’s body in Visage. In “Studien zu Cathy Berberians ‘New Vocality’,” Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild is clear that “[Berberian’s] physicality is evident through the sound of her voice” (Die Körperlichkeit dieser Frau ist durch den Klang ihrer Stimme anwesend; 2011: 132). By employing the voice to convey intense affect, Berio (via Berberian) brought the body into Visage. Additionally, by using Berberian’s vocalizations with minimal processing, Berio carried into the piece a greater potential for psycho-physical empathy than had the voice been processed to the point where listeners could no longer imagine their own bodies making similar sounds. In this way, Visage functions like a piece of musique concrete; the sound source is recognizable but invisible, so the audience must discern or project situations that might induce the sounds they hear throughout the piece. 1 Berio enhanced this musique-concrete ethos by including only one word, “parole” (“words” in Italian), uttered infrequently throughout the piece and in a variety of contexts. Listeners engage the full semiotics of Berberian’s voice, largely unmediated/unobscured by linguistic semantics.

To create psycho-physical meaning from Visage, listeners draw on their embodied memories and projections. In this way, listeners’ own bodies become present in the piece, as well. As Crossley has noted, “engaged listening often takes the form of role play,” where listeners will emulate the movements they imagine performers to be using, whether or not those are the actual actions performers are taking to produce their sounds (2019: 28). Even if these subtle movements typically create a backdrop against which we experience the piece, vocalizations that suggest particularly intense situations can bring this embodied aspect of listening more to the front of our awareness.

Writers have commented indirectly on Visage’s physicality through discussions of the sexual intimacy and extreme violence suggested by Berberian’s vocalizations and their “poetic” organization by Berio (Herzfeld-Schild, 2011: 132; Meehan 2011: 49; Osmond-Smith 2004: 8-9). One common topic is ca. 2:49-3:25 ( Sound 5 ), where the electronic sounds become louder and more percussive, accompanied by a shift in the vocal gestures to predominantly shrieks and moans. This happens again at 6:55-7:33 ( Sound 6 ), this time with longer, more drawn-out whimpering, sobbing and moaning. Both moments suggest physical violence (performed by the electronic sounds) toward the character Berberian is portraying with her vocalizations. Another common topic of commentary involves the sensual laughter that appears repeatedly throughout Visage (3:25, 6:05 ( Sound 7 ), 7:33, etc.). The moments from 6:22-6:44 ( Sound 8 ) are particularly sexy, with a variety of sighs, laughs, and giggles that suggest the protagonist is experiencing physical intimacy. Berberian’s vocalizations here invite listeners to empathize with sexuality, a realm of experience listeners are rarely asked to engage within electronic music. The “disturbing” quality, the “obscenity” some have found in Visage may stem more from listeners’ own physical reactions to the piece than from the mere organization of sounds into intellectually stimulating patterns.

And indeed, listeners’ projections of pain onto Berberian’s performing body are not merely imaginative. In a 1981 interview with Silvana Ottieri, Berberian related that she

had to communicate the agony of attempting to speak a syllable and not being capable… In the end my chest was numb for three days, due to the magnitude of my physical and emotional effort. (Ottieri / Berberian 1981, as cited in Meehan 2011: 56)

Berberian, recording vocal sounds for Berio, was unable to avoid the physicality inherent in the production of Visage. Her body felt the ramifications of their intense, extended recording sessions. And, because Berio reproduced her vocalizations with minimal processing, listeners have a much closer, clearer experience of that physicality than they might with other, contemporaneous electronic works. Whether or not listeners can accurately emulate the physical gestures Berberian used in her recordings, they (we) can hear the strong suggestions of physical strain in her vocalizations. If we accept that listeners tend to mimic, to some degree, the physical states they observe in or project onto performers, Visage becomes an opportunity for listeners not only to “witness” intensely affected vocalizations but also to feel in their bodies some of the meaning they ascribe to those vocal gestures. Listeners derive meaning from both the imagined physical states they project onto Berberian’s vocal gestures and their own bodily engagement with the piece. In attempting to create a piece that communicated intense emotional affect, Berio also created a piece that communicated to a greater degree the bodily processes by which it was produced, linking the aural with the physical even as he strove to link the affective with the electronic.

  Embodiment and Electronic Sounds

In drawing upon the semiotics of affect-heavy vocal gestures to attach emotional/poetic/musical meaning to electronic sounds, Berio brought the presence of the performer’s body prominently into listeners’ experiences of the piece as a whole, electronic sounds included. This is because

The invocation of, on the one hand, electronic sounds which carry no specific connotations, and, on the other, the most meaningful sound of all—the human voice—makes possible the establishment and dissolution of innumerable different interrelationships, and allows Berio freely to exploit the potential for referential ambiguity inherent in the electroacoustic medium. The extreme and carefully calculated tension between the great accuracy of semiotic specificity and the total lack of semantic specificity forces the mind of the listener into creative activity. (Causton 1995: 20)

The close relationships between vocal and electronic sounds causes semiotic content from the vocal gestures to bleed into the electronic sounds—one of Berio’s stated goals for the piece. However, the voice evokes physical as well as emotional meaning, so the semiotic blurring between voice and electronics carries with it references to physicality. At the same time, I am not suggesting that this semiotic transference is a clear-cut, 1:1 process. In addition to the inherent diversity of listeners’ experiences of the piece, based on their unique embodied memories and imaginings, there is a mixing and recoloring of the electronic sounds’ meanings that occur as vocal semiotics and vocal-electronic relationships shift. Throughout Visage, the electronic sounds continually take on new functions and new layers of meaning.

The transformation of “white” noise over the course of the piece provides a clear example of these shifting semiotics. From 0:00-0:25 ( Sound 9 ), smooth filtered noise provides a backdrop for Berberian’s struggle to form sounds and syllables. At 0:26, the noise develops texture, and at 0:55 the noise is filtered enough to become pitched, though it still retains the sustained and textural identities of the earlier filtered noise gestures. At 1:50, the noise introduces a new aspect of itself: short, percussive “pops,” that instigate a shift in the voice to denser, speech-like vocalizations. Until this point, the white noise has been progressing through a parallel process to the voice, beginning with the simplest texture and moving toward speech-like patterns.

Then, at ca. 2:50, the “pops” become more and more dense, eventually moving into a competitive position in the foreground of the sound and conveying violence against the voice. This violence is communicated largely by the voice’s “response” to the electronic sounds; the shrieks and moans in close proximity to the loud, percussive filtered noise sounds signal to the listener that these electronic sounds are related to (physical) pain. After this episode, the filtered noise returns at 6:55 for a recapitulation of the increasingly loud percussive gestures that “cause” the voice to whimper and cry out. No longer in the more neutral realm of linguistic mimicry, the filtered noise (esp. via its relationship with Berberian’s vocal gestures) has taken on connotations of (physical) violence. Berio’s choices in organizing electronic and vocal sounds created trajectories that involved physical connotations.

From here, the filtered noise sounds join other electronic sounds as part of larger textures, no longer a primary focus. As part of a larger texture, the filtered noise regains some of its quality of vocal imitation, its character of attempted linguistic communication. Then, in the final four minutes of the piece, we meet a new kind of “filtered noise.” This time, the “noise” is built additively and has expanded to assume its own identity, occupying the foreground and the background of the sound, entirely distinct from the voice but containing echoes of earlier vocalizations, as though the noise has subsumed the voice within itself. In these final minutes of the piece, listeners are confronted with a wall of electronic sound that contains—and also exceeds—the layered, potentially conflicting, associations and projected physical memories from earlier vocalizations and their electronic counterparts.

Another example of shifting and layering semiotics involves the fluttery, delicate, pitched and unpitched electronic sounds that enter at 3:42 ( Sound 10 ). Here, rather than a show of violence, there is a turn toward intimacy. These sounds, which may evolve out of the filtered noise gesture at 0:55, accompany flirty, friendly, soft vocalizations. The delicate electronic sounds often echo or mimic the cadence and texture of the vocal gestures, and they support the voice, remaining primarily in the background. Throughout this flirty moment, the electronic sounds develop new timbres resembling gently percussive plastic (starting ca. 3:54; Sound 11 ) and then glass (starting ca. 4:50; Sound 12 ) objects. Whereas the earlier, more “violent” electronic sounds were imbued with semiotic meaning via their seemingly antagonistic relationship with the voice, these delicate electronic sounds acquire meaning (flirtation, relaxation) over their prolonged proximity to and similarity with the affectionate vocalizations.

Then the unpitched gestures elongate from brief clusters of articulation to granulated sustained sweeps/swells that eventually trade off with metallic drones at 5:52 ( Sound 13 ). This transformation loosens former semiotic attachments but creates a clearer connection with the glass-like gently percussive gestures at 9:31 that become sandy and then buzzing while the voice intermittently laughs seductively. The similarly flirty (though more intense) semiotics of this laughter recalls earlier iterations of these granular gestures, strengthening those associations. However, an assertive metallic granular gesture at 9:41 suggests other potential connotations.

Starting at 12:01, metallic granular swells return, louder, this time leading into a return of distressed vocalizations similar to those associated with the “violent” filtered noise earlier in the piece ( Sound 14 ). Rather than the electronic sounds providing a backdrop for the voice, the vocalizations and electronic sounds are now in close counterpoint, neither entirely in the foreground or background of the texture for very long. This new positioning of the granular gestures within the overall texture shifts their function and also complicates earlier semiotic associations. While they continue their original pattern of emulating the vocal gestures’ rhythms/textures, their performative relationship to the voice has changed. Rather than providing support and/or commentary on the vocalizations, here the granular gestures seem to compete with the voice for prominence. Earlier associations with friendship or flirtation are challenged by this new sense of competition and ensuing violence. Any earlier attributions of physical safety and comfort are complicated by this new implication of danger.

Throughout Visage, Berio has created a “’humanization’ of electronic sounds by means of ‘imitation’ and extension of and competition with the voice” (Flynn 1975: 392). For listeners, this “humanization” involves a semiotic transference between vocal gestures and electronic sounds such that the electronic sounds acquire some of the voice’s embodied meaning. When the psychophysical associations with Berberian’s vocalizations blur and begin to attach themselves to the electronic sounds in unstable and conflicting ways, we are presented with the new challenge of vocal-semiotic stimulation without clear links to recognizable embodied experience. These looser relationships carry us through the remainder of the piece, where, at the end, we are left alone with the electronic sounds, imbued with layered and conflicting projected physical memories, our bodies having become the reflective surfaces upon which the electronic sounds’ semiotics play.

  Conclusion

In his author’s note, Berio described Visage as “based on the symbolic and representative charge that is carried by vocal gestures and inflections,” in which “the vocal dimension of the work is constantly amplified and commented upon by a very close relationship, almost an organic exchange, with the electronic sounds” (n.d., para. 2). However, by employing relatively unprocessed vocal recordings, Berio also illuminated the presence of the body in the processes of performing and listening to the piece. Visage challenges us to notice Berberian’s body as well as our own, to imagine her body and our own in uncomfortable (or too comfortable) situations. As listeners, we experience the physicality of the piece more intensely in our own bodies because Berberian’s body is not present. Our projected empathy has no feedback loop outside of ourselves.

Sounds originating from bodies, like Berberian’s vocalizations, better enable us to experience electronically-produced sounds in bodily ways. And this experience extends beyond Visage. The unintended connections Berio drew between physical sensations and electronic sounds, through affective correlation and juxtaposition between sounds produced by a body and those produced by a machine, could be located in other works for voice and electronics, as well. Analyzing other electroacoustic pieces that incorporate vocal sound through the lens of embodied listening can offer new insights into their meaning and impact. Additionally, with an understanding of listening as an embodied, empathetic act, there is much room for research into the embodied experience of electroacoustic works that employ sounds produced by other physical processes, both human and non-human. There could also be merit in investigating the content and limits of projected, embodied empathy with electroacoustic works produced entirely by machines, where there is no immediate connection to human bodies beyond that of the listener. How much do we project embodied states or processes onto electroacoustic sounds when there is no initial bodily referent? There is significant analytical work that can be done if we take our bodies seriously as participants in the listening experience.

  References

Berio, L. (n.d.). Visage (author’s note). Retrieved November 19, 2020. https://lucianoberio.org/node/1505?2019623839=1.

Berio, L. (2006). Remembering the Future. Harvard University Press.

Brown, N. (2006). The Flux between Sounding and Sound: Towards a Relational Understanding of Music as Embodied Action. Contemporary Music Review 25/1-2: 37-46.

Causton, R. (1995). Berio’s ‘Visage’ and the Theatre of Electroacoustic Music. Tempo, Italian Issue 194: 15-21.

Cimini, A. (2012). Vibrating Colors and Silent Bodies. Music, Sound and Silence in Maurice-Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of Dualism. Contemporary Music Review 31/5-6: 353-370.

Corness, G. (2008). The Musical Experience through the Lens of Embodiment. Leonardo Music Journal 18/1: 21-24.

Cox, A. (2011). Embodying Music: Principles of the Mimetic Hypothesis. Music Theory Online 17/2. https:// mtosmt.org/issues/mto.11.17.2/mto.11.17.2.cox.html.

Cox, A. (2001). The Mimetic Hypoethesis and Embodied Musical Meaning. Musicae Scientiae 5/2: 195-212.

Crossley, N. (2019). Connecting Sounds: The social life of music. Manchester University Press.

Dudas, R. (2010). “Comprovisation”: The Various Facets of Composed Improvisation within Interactive Performance Systems. Leonardo Music Jounal 20/1: 29-31.

Dyson, F. (2009). Sounding New Media: Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture. University of California Press.

Flynn, G. W. (1975). Listening to Berio’s Music. The Musical Quarterly 61/3: 388-421.

Hatten, R. S. (2018). A Theory of Virtual Agency for Western Art Music. Indiana University Press.

Herzfeld-Schild, M. L. (2011). Studien zu Cathy Berberians “New Vocality.” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 68/2: 121-156.

Juntunen, M.-L., / Westerlund, H. (2001). Digging Dalcroze, or, Dissolving the Mind-Body Dualism: Philosophical and Practical Remarks on the Musical Body in Action. Music Education Research 3/2: 203-214.

Leman, M., / Maes, P.-J. (2014). The Role of Embodiment in the Perception of Music. Empirical Musicology Review 9/3-4: 236-246.

Meehan, K. (2011). Not Just a Pretty Voice: Cathy Berberian as Collaborator, Composer and Creator (Doctoral Dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (ProQuest Document ID 3450906)

Oliva, S. (2019). Music and Language? Deleuze, Guattari and Berio on Visage. La Deleuziana Online Journal of Philosophy 10: 223-231.

Osmond-Smith, D., / Berberian, C. (2004). The Tenth Oscillator: The Work of Cathy Berberian 1958-1966. Tempo 58/227: 2-13.

Pelinski, R. (2005). Embodiment and Musical Experience. TRANS-Revista Transcultural de Música 9: 1-42. Retrieved December 8, 2020. http://www.ramonpelinski.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Embodiment-and-musical-experience-2005.pdf

1. This effect was likely complicated in performances where Ber-berian was present on stage, since listeners would have had vis-ual stimulus that contradicted any remembered or projected scenarios of intimacy or violence; however, this contradictory information would likely have added layers of meaning to the experience rather than negating listeners’ psycho-physical imag-inings during the piece.

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