what is the word

When Beckettian language is reduced to fragments of sound, it comes close to music; music itself emerges out of silence. what is the word meditates upon the delicate interrelationship of language, music and silence. what is the word comprises of three compositions and written ‘reflections’ created through an engagement with the late aesthetics of Samuel Beckett: what is the word (for narrator, violin, double bass and guitar; six residua (after Beckett) for violin; and five disjecta (after Beckett) for guitar. Following Beckett has altered my compositional process, forming new musical formulations that shift from narrative approaches to processes that investigate music itself. I was inspired by Beckett's fierce integrity in creating a kind of philosophy of (and in) writing. Seeking to explore in music facets of Beckett’s late work—an aesthetic of impoverishment; semantic deconstruction; a yearning for silence—led me into areas exploring techniques often deemed ‘incompatible with art’, employing sounds considered ‘unusable’ by composers; shifting from reliance upon traditional semantic constructions towards methods whereby minute entities are mined for the utmost meaning. Silence-orientated procedures replace conventional motific development. Figurations reappearing in different contexts offer different meanings and perspectives. Established vocabularies are abandoned in favour of fractured schemata, deconstructed ‘languages’, gesture-generated sounds, and a host of traditionally rejected sonorities and noises. For example, following Beckett’s incessant mining of individual words, and their onomatopoeic and palindromic potential (nohow on / knowhow / ‘no’ mirrors ‘on’, etc.), which reproduces multiple meanings from a minimum of material, my residua I comprises only a series of repeated G notes. However, alterations of articulation, note length, dynamics, timbre, and harmonics result in a similar extraction of excess meaning and reinterpretation. The CD was launched at the Dublin New Music festival at the National Concert Hall on 29 February 2020.

what is the word is a CD recording of three pieces of music composed through an engagement with the late aesthetics of Samuel Beckett. They are 'six residua (after Beckett)'; 'what is the word (triptych with interludes); and 'five disjecta (after Beckett)'. The CD features Benjamin Dwyer (guitar); Maya Homburger (violin); Barry Guy (double bass); and Conor Lovett (actor). The CD also includes an essay entitles 'eleven reflections on Beckett, music and silence'.