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Leo Kupper - Digital Voices
 It
is always a good feeling when you enter a previously unknown musical
artist-composer's world and find you can make yourself at home there.
That's how I felt after hearing a few times Leo Kupper's Digital Voices
(Pogus 21060-2) CD.
There are six works included on the disk, one is a solo santur
(hammered zither) piece played by the composer, and it's nicely done.
It serves as the mid-point in the program, the rest having a particular
singer showcased with electro-acoustics, natural sounds and/or
instrumental foundations as a way of expressing the Kupper musical
ethos.
The final three works combine live instruments and electro-acoustics to
surround and complement the vocal basso richness of Nicholas Isherwood.
There is good use of multi-tracking to make of Isherwood's voice a
veritable almost Greek-Orthodox-Buddhist-Chant choir at times, only in
a modern expanded vein. Bells, chimes and other ring-timbred sounds
combine with electronics and vocal melanges in a haunting series of
soundscapes.
The opening two works feature vocal performances-collages by Barbara
Zanichelli (soprano) and Anna Maria Kieffer (mezzo-soprano),
respectively. These pieces are no less interesting but map a (perhaps
understandably, given the range) somewhat brighter sonic world.
Think of the now classic Berberian-Berio collaboration "Visage" and you
get some idea of the lineage that Kupper's Digital Voices extends out
of and innovates within. There are written vocal parts at times which
the singers extend with their own vocal elaborations; and abstract
vocal expressions that follow guidelines mapped out by the composer.
The vocal results are manipulated digitally to various degrees and
integrated into the electro-instrumental digital matrix created by
Kupper for each work.
"Tour de force" is a critical phrase used perhaps too often these days,
but I do not hesitate to use it for Digital Voices. These are landmark
works for the most part, a triumph of the human voice holding its own,
flourishing in a world of machines and digital automata. Kupper has
created a series of works that embody the ultimate triumph of the human
spirit over the human-made creations that threaten to envelop and
enslave it. Yet Kupper's digital world in no way embodies the
impersonality of automata. Rather it is a naturally flowing series of
landscapes in sound, all expressing something very human. Beautifully
done, enormously enriching, psyche-boosting music. Kupper gives us that
and very poetically, too. - Grego Applegate Edwards, Gapplegate
Barbara Zanichelli, soprano; Anna Maria Kieffer, mezzo-soprano; Nicholas Isherwood, bass
Although minutely pre-conceived in the entirety of its parameters, Leo
Kupper’s music repudiates the belief in “hyper technology replacing
sentience”. On the contrary, an unwavering interior acuity – of
performer and listener alike – is imperative in the composer’s attempt
to establish what he calls an “internationalization of spirituality”.
Digital Voices gathers six compositions, just one being unvoiced.
Kupper’s aptitude in conjoining deeply individual subjects with the
logical solutions furnished by the studio warrants luminous results all
the way through and – at least in a pair of episodes – a rare type of
austere disconsolateness.
The program’s initial helping features two cycles of “abstract and
articulate” songs performed by the female vocalists. “Aviformes”
compounds Barbara Zanichelli’s ductile sharpness with actual and
transmuted birdsongs, whereas “Kamana” introduces more tactile
components in a mélange defined by Anna Maria Kieffer’s overlapping
variations, occasionally recalling Meredith Monk’s flights of fancy.
Instead, “Parcours Pour Santur” exploits and transforms the timbral
attributes of the Iranian cimbalom in a technically advanced
stereophonic reverie, functioning as an intermission of sorts.
If the women are, in this case, the mainstays of Kupper’s view on the
nature’s (and, in general, the world’s) ascendancy on acoustic
imagination, male vocalism is the kernel of his finest work herein.
“Lumière Sans Ombre” presents a hybridization of melodic percussion and
computer-processed samples of Slavic liturgical chants upon which
Nicholas Isherwood’s inspiriting bass inflection depicts mesmerizing
figurations in a made-up idiom (the latter trait typifying all the
songs in this set; Kupper rightly believes that intelligible words can
hamper the “expression of the inexpressible” as they “camouflage the
real perception of sonorities”).
Besides that jewel, pinnacles of veritable grace are also found in
“Paroles Sur Lèvres” and “Paroles Sur Langue”, a total of fifteen
minutes where short soundless pauses are wisely thrown amidst flashes
of affecting incorruptibility; a macrocosm of wavering choirs, vast
compasses and grief-stricken mutability. The music’s psychophysical
incidence allows us to reach awe-inspiring altitudes, highlighted by
the rise and fall of the heartbeat’s rhythm during instants of
unembellished enlightenment.
If you read Kupper’s complex yet coherent rationalization of what lies
behind these magnificent paradigms of his creativity, marvel at how
heartrending the outcome of those intricate processes can be. This
writer has listened to the album four times in a few hours; the sense
of discovery and the wish of “belonging” are still there, calling him
to additional spins. - Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes
Leo Küpper
(spelled without the umlaut on his Pogus releases) is firmly entrenched
within the electroacoustic tradition as can be borne out by his
inclusion in several of the Cultures Electroniques compilations from
the sadly now defunct GMEB/IMEB. Born in 1935, he worked with fellow
Belgian electronic legend Henri Pousseur back in 1962. Küpper's music
didn't appear on record until 1971 when Deutsche Grammophon released
his amazing "L'enclume des forces" album in their Avant Garde series.
Similarly mind blowing was his 1981 LP on the collectable Igloo label
featuring the pieces "Kouros et Korê" and "Innominé". All three of
these pieces were honorably collected on a Sub Rosa CD in 2003,
rescuing them from obscurity, although unfortunately leaving off one of
the other pieces no doubt due to lack of space on a single disc. Leo
had a second LP on Igloo in 1985 featuring the piece "Amkéa" and
"Aérosons" which is where Leo's Pogus disc follow from. "Digital
Voices" is Küpper's third CD for Pogus Productions after a space of 13
years. As might be guessed from the title, this disc focuses on pieces
of treated vocal sounds. In the five voice based pieces here, Küpper
focuses on abstract vocals stating in the enclosed 40 page booklet that
intelligible language distracts from hearing the actual sonorities of
vocal performance. The comparison to Luciano Berio's groundbreaking
"Visage" (1961) immediately comes to my mind and I find it specifically
acknowledged by Leo in his notes. These pieces are all much more
recent, with the bulk of them composed from 2006 to 2010 and last being
from 1993. Each of the vocal pieces features a single performer:
Barbara Zanichelli, Nicholas Isherwood, and his frequent collaborator
Anna Maria Kieffer. However, that said, both "Paroles Sur Lèvres"
(Words on Lips) and "Paroles Sur Langue" (Words on Tongue) don't credit
any vocalist. In the middle of these voice pieces is a solo for santur
(also spelled santoor by others - a Persian instrument similar to the
hammer dulcimer, but much older) performed by the composers himself. It
is a spacious and peaceful piece using a great deal of stereo imaging
and apparently uses no instrumentalist to play it. Unfortunately
exactly how this is done is not made clear in the notes. The opening
piece, "Aviformes", combines wordless soprano vocals with bird song in
a seven part suite that reminds me of some of the later Jacques Lejuene
work in its compositional form. "Kamana" up the prominence of digitally
manipulated sounds to combine with the multiple layers, up to seven, of
mezzo-soprano vocals and unspecified "instrumental sounds from around
the world" but retains the aleatory structure of the previous piece. As
alluded to above, the two "Paroles" suites don't focus on a solo
vocalist, but seem to work with an unknown choir singer in a deeper
register. Following the progression already inherent, the electronics
take an even strong prominence here with the vocals seeming to be more
of a coloring. That said, it seems likely from the notes that the
electronic sounds themselves are in fact highly transformed
abstractions of the vocal material no longer recognizable as such. A
couple of the sections of "Paroles sur Lèvres" bring in instrumental
sounds again and all seem to use a degree of MIDI synthesis yet both
contribute in a frenetic manner and avoid melodic or strictly metered
forms. The closing "Lumière Sans Ombre" (Light With Shadow) is the
logically follow up continuing with a similar compositional approach
and sound sources the exception of focusing on Isherwood's bass vocals.
The closing piece is the closest to classical tradition with the song
based on Slavic liturgical chant. Nevertheless it does retain its
otherworldly digital atmosphere through the inclusion of various
synthetic sounds. Overall there is a compositional unity among all the
pieces on this CD while still allowing each composition to have its
distinctive qualities. Unlike other Pogus CD, this disc comes in a
cardboard gatefold cover, probably in part due to the inclusion of a
thicker than normal booklet. - Eric Lanzillotta, Bixobal
Belgian composer Leo Kupper
worked with Henry Pousseur in the first studio of electronic music in
Belgium. ‘Digital Voices’, the third release of Kupper for Pogus, came
into being in Studio de Recherches in Brussels. As the title suggests,
most compositions on this recording deal with the human voice. In the
sixth composition the santur is the main instrument. Kupper formulated
his intentions for this recording as "to encourage the
internationalization of spirituality through a musical language that
accepts both sung and instrumental world sonorities that can be mixed
with electronic sounds derived from the voices of the singers."
‘Aviformes’ is built up from very recognizable birdsongs. I’m not sure
whether this are electronically manipulated field recordings or sounds
completely of
electronic origin. In that case birdsongs and calls were very
accurately transcribed. Soprano Zanichelli dialogues with these
abstract songs. The closing piece ‘Light without Shadow’ is based on
Slavic liturgical chant. It exemplifies an experience that I had
throughout this cd. Namely that I feel emotionally engaged by the
singing and not so much by the electronic sounds. It was new to me to
experience this duality so strongly. - DM, Vital Weekly
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