I’ve always viewed speech and language as forms of music.  There’s a certain lilt and intonation to speech that, often, makes it musical.  And there is nowhere that is more rich and diverse in this linguistic music than the Voice of America where, daily, you can hear all 43 languages being broadcast while roaming the hallways. 

This recording is an academic exercise I did for an independent study in multi-tack editing as part of my Ph.D. program at Capella University.  The beginning and ending are sound montages of some of the most musical voices I’ve heard at the VOA with the Intro coming from the famous VOA station I.D. sung a capella by Louis Armstrong on the Willis Conover show.  The ending is a multi-track variance on the standard “service cue,” which is played at the end of every VOA radio broadcast.  There is also some secret messages in Morse code, which, to me, is also musical in its own way. 

The middle is a piece that I had the opportunity to perform in college with the Phi Mu Alpha professional music fraternity chorus in concert at Ford Hall at Ithaca College under the baton of maestro Irwin Goldberg.  It is entitled the “Geographical Fugue.”

It was written in the 1920s by Ernst Toch in Berlin and uses a technique called “gesprech gesangen” or “singing speech.” Originally written for four-voice choir – soprano, alto, tenor and bass – it follows a strict fugal construction.  For this multi-track editing exercise, I recorded myself four times for each of the four vocal parts so there are “16 Rickys” singing or speaking these parts.

Sit back, pour a tall glass of bourbon – or, if you’re in a state where it’s legal, light up a joint – put on some headphones and enjoy the wackiness of my rendition of Ernst Toch’s “Geographical Fugue.” 


The "Geographical Fugue"

Rick, PhD