Any work of art that has nothing to communicate is essentially meaningless. As an artist, I am passionately committed to meaningful communication, which is the basis of harmony.

Both art and harmony share common Latin, Greek, and Indo-European etymological roots that express the fundamental concept of joining or fitting together parts into a whole. Where there is wholeness, where all parts successfully communicate with one another, there is order and right relationship.

Walter Pater has well said, "All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music." Although music does not always communicate with great specificity, it excels in the expression of general moods, states, ideas, and actions. Allied with language, music brings an entirely different quality to words, heightening their meaning and affective intensity. Fortunate, indeed, is the poet who not only writes but sings, reaching minds and touching hearts through the powerful medium of musical sound.

Although I dare to fancy myself a poet, I have no pretensions about being a singer: I am afraid the inadequacies of my vocal apparatus would alienate even the best-intentioned listener. Not to be undone by this limitation, however, I sought and found another voice that enables me to sing without handicap and a language perfectly suited both to the special properties of that voice and the poetic ideas it is intended to express.

Because of my background as a pianist, it was only natural that I should come to think of my instrument as a second voice. Ongoing interest in the keyboard eventually led to the discovery of digital synthesizers, which greatly increased the variety of sounds I could produce and, through MIDI, the degree of technical precision I could achieve in performance. It was obvious, however, that no musical instrument, acoustic or digital, could sing or even recite poetry without a fully functional tonal language.

The concept of imparting speech to musical instruments is by no means new. Music cryptography--the use of musical symbols to convey secret messages--has been practiced at least since the fifteenth century. (Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, s.v. "Cryptography, musical," 78, col. 1) Telemann, Tartini, Schumann, and Elgar each took an evident interest in the subject, and Michael Haydn even devised a sophisticated music cipher for his personal communications that might equally have been applied as a compositional technique.

Important, too, in the historical development of instrumental speech was the use of music as an alternative communications system. The popular notion of music as a universal language was espoused as early as 1641 by Bishop Wilkins, who suggested "there might be such a general [musical] language as should be equally speakable by all nations and peoples." (Ibid., 79, col. 1) By the late seventeenth century, German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz also envisioned an artificial language of musical tones and intervals. (Ibid.)

By 1800, it is reported that students at a certain school for the blind in Paris could "read" music performed by a violin, but it was the work of visionary academician François Sudre (1787-1862) along similar lines that ultimately attracted the most attention. Sudre, who also carried on dialogs with the aid of a violin, invented a complete artificial language by 1817 "in which any seven different symbols could be combined five at a time, with variations of order and stress." (79, col. 2) This full-fledged "langue musicale universelle" created something of a stir among French intellectuals before falling into virtual oblivion.

Sudre's language probably failed to catch on because it was far less efficient than Morse Code and too cumbersome as a substitute for ordinary speech. (Ibid.) For that matter, no contemporary composer could likely have made much music out of its rather intractable tonal vocabulary.

The invention of solmization in the late Middle Ages already hinted at these developments. The musical tones sung to the solfège syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la and si, were actual words in Latin or one or more romance languages (e.g., re(y) = king). In the middle of the Italian Renaissance, Franco-Belgian composer Josquin Desprez carved out the vowels from the Latin form of the name of Duke Hercules I of Ferrara--Hercules dux Ferrariae--and the resulting subject, comprised of the pitches D (re) - C (ut) - D (re) - C (ut) - D (re) - F (fa) - E (mi) - D (re), served as the basis for one of his most important masses.

An equally simple but effective device was the use of pitch names to spell out a person's name, which melodic motif could be embedded in extended musical compositions. The best known example is the "B-A-C-H" subject employed by the composer himself ("H" in German, stands for B-natural, while "B" signifies B-flat), and subsequently by Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Busoni, among others.

Beethoven, fearing perhaps that his speech was becoming less intelligible after losing the ability to hear himself speak, attempted to use musical instruments as a surrogate voice. It is not known whether he was familiar with Sudre's work, but the instrumental recitative which he introduced in the lower strings shortly after the beginning of the finale in his Ninth Symphony clearly represents a tentative effort to recite the text of Schiller's "Ode to Joy" by transforming the words into purely melodic material. Later in the movement, Beethoven, in ostensible frustration, consigns this abortive instrumental speech to a baritone soloist, who intones the words "O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!" (Figs. 1a, 1b)

In his String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135, Beethoven placed a curious inscription in the manuscript of the final movement which actually equates germinal melodic motives to the question "Muss es sein?" ("Must it be?") and the response "Es muss sein" ("It must be!"). Beethoven explained in a note to his publisher, Schlesinger, that the meaning of these seemingly enigmatic inscriptions could be deciphered in light of the fact that the composer had not only promised Schlesinger the quartet but also urgently needed the money it would bring in upon completion (Figs. 2a, 2b).

The keyboard scores of Liszt's "Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa" (Années de pèlerinage, vol. 2 ["Italie"], no. 3), with the eponymous poetic text placed above each system , and Schumnann's "Der Dichter Spricht" (Kinderscenen, no. 13), further attest to the widespread romantic interest in treating instrumental music as a vehicle for the expression of specific poetic ideas.

In addition to these well-known examples, the marriage of literary text and instrumental music was celebrated in the works of creative intellects as diverse as C.P.E. Bach, Jean-Paul Richter, Clemens Brentano, Ludwig Spohr, John Field, Johannes Brahms, Alexander Glazunov, Cesar Cui, Bedrich Smetana, Vincent d'Indy, and Edward Elgar. Twentieth-century exponents of actual musical cipher systems were no less prominent, and significantly included a large number of Frenchmen, among them Debussy, Ravel, Dukas, Poulenc, Honegger, Milhaud, Ibert, and Messiaen. Among moderns of other nationalities who explored similar systems were such musical luminaries as Bax, Berg, and Shostakovich (Grove's, 79-81).

By 1983, after some years of reflection and experimentation, I had developed a simple technique for generating instrumental dialects of all languages written with the Roman alphabet. The technique is called "C-1"--short for "Chromatic-One." By assigning specific melodic intervals to the various letters of the alphabet, it was possible to create tonal dialects of many existing languages that satisfactorily met my desire to recite poetry on musical instruments of definite pitch. Thus, I developed dialects of "Chromatic Italian," "Chromatic French," and "Chromatic German," in addition to "Chromatic English."

The technique in question is similar but not identical to that of the Renaissance soggetto cavato (cf. the Josquin example above), in which a musical subject was derived by assigning solmization syllables to corresponding vowels sequentially excised from certain words. (An earlier form of the same technique is described by Guido d'Arezzo in his Micrologus.) C-1, however, equates all letters of the alphabet--not just vowels--with melodic intervals--not single tones. By interlocking these melodic intervals, entire words are readily formed.

Distinctive melodies, like well-crafted lines of poetry or prose, hold deep associative potential. Even when melodies are stripped of their words, the listener's memory often supplies the missing meaning, which fact helps to explain why instrumental arrangements of popular songs have enjoyed such considerable success. Because C-1 techniques generate complete spoken dialects of existing languages by the combination of miniature melodic elements, with sufficient exposure and practice listeners are able to hear, retain, and identify short melodies as actual words.

Due to its essentially melodic character, C-1 avoids the often mechanical quality of other artificial language systems such as Morse Code. What is more, it frees the user from many traditional speech habits imposed by the parent languages themselves. Such conventionalized elements as accent, rhythm, velocity, volume, and timbre are left entirely to the taste and discretion of the individual C-1 speaker or composer. All that is required for C-1 is a good working knowledge of melodic intervals on a fully chromatic instrument of suitable range. Vocalists and those performing instruments with limited ranges can take equal advantage of C-1 in ensemble situations, combining forces with others in the collaborative recitation of texts.

Success in any language, however, is not merely a matter of knowing how to pronounce words and string them together into sentences. C-1 reveals its full potential only in the hands of skilled, musically informed individuals with the creative insight and experimental initiative to discover the most effective means of shaping its melodic words into richly evocative, powerfully expressive tonal statements.

It must be admitted once and for all that musical tones, heard either simultaneously or consecutively, can never be a practical substitute for ordinary spoken language. I am confident, however, that C-1 represents about as complete a fusion of language and tonal instrumental music as is possible without jeopardizing general comprehensibility and aesthetic interest. Although it would have been relatively easy to create an entirely new language using melodic materials in a manner similar to Sudre, C-1 offers the great advantage of enabling instrumentalists and vocalists acquainted with many common languages to draw fully upon the linguistic knowledge and skills they have already mastered.

C-1 is denotatively intelligible when spoken at slow or moderate tempos, presuming that the speaker and listener have both received sufficient instruction and practice. As such, I have used it for college classes in ear-training in which students were delighted to discover that musical tones could actually communicate the names of composers and other words and phrases. At faster tempos, or when accompanied by other tonal material, the communicative function of C-1 is for the most part connotative.

C-1, it should be stressed again, was envisioned primarily as a poetic language to enrich the printed or spoken word by endowing it with special musical properties not present in ordinary speech or song. As such, the burden of conveying explicit meaning in C-1 is placed primarily on the written word, regardless of tempo. It should be customary, therefore, for literary texts to be distributed at C-1 poetry recitals, in much the same way that program notes are routinely handed out at concerts. Written C-1 is, of course, identical to the written forms of its parent languages, although it is readily transliterated into music notation when something more than a simple recitation is required.

The role of C-1 will be clearer by demonstrating its relationship to other common modes of communication. C-1 fits within a continuum ranging from the rigorous semantic precision of higher mathematics to the generalized, but highly subtle expression characteristic of instrumental music:

If we take this same continuum to represent a scale on which the functions of the analytic left brain and intuitive right brain are equally weighted at opposite ends, poetry and vocal music lie on either side of an imaginary fulcrum positioned at the center. However, it is evident that mathematics and instrumental music, by no means opposites, have both analytical and intuitive aspects that cannot be adequately depicted by such a simplified diagram. What this diagram does reveal, however, is that C-1--as instrumental speech--represents a unique, still largely unexplored artistic domain, as different from vocal music as the latter is different from poetry.

With relatively few exceptions, the actual sounds of ordinary words are arbitrary and do little to illustrate or enhance the meanings they are intended to convey. Those meanings, however, must be clearly defined and associated with specific words for language to function in a practical sense.

Poetic speech, on the other hand, is intended for artistic expression, and need not invariably conform to the conventions of everyday language if alternative expressive means are available. Indeed, poetry is one of the principal vehicles whereby conventional language is transformed and enriched, and poets must, therefore, enjoy considerable freedom to experiment with various linguistic forms, styles, and techniques.

Literal comprehensibility of a text has not infrequently been a matter of little consequence for composers. Highly melismatic or polyphonic vocal music of all historical periods alters the listener's perception of words in such a way that denotative meaning may slip into the background. Some decidedly disjunct or otherwise nontraditional melodies, such as those in Boulez's Le marteau sans maître, are equally unintelligible without recourse to the written text. It is clear that Boulez was not preoccupied with the clear enunciation of the words in those poems by René Char he chose to set, but succeeded through other musical means in heightening their meaning.

Poets, too, have often concerned themselves more with the connotative significance of their texts rather than with making literal sense. How else could one account for the Louis Carroll of "Jabberwocky," the Arthur Rimbaud of "Le bateau ivre," the Louis Aragon of "Persiennes," or the Edith Sitwell of "Façade"?

Even in purely artistic contexts, however, flouting the conventions of ordinary language by speaking at unaccustomed tempos, violating normal accentual patterns, exaggerating or altering common inflections, and the like may strike the listener as gratuitously absurd, incomprehensible, or objectionable. Text painting and such later techniques as Sprechstimme have been effectively used in vocal music to modify the conventional patterns of ordinary speech to some degree without necessarily undermining intelligibility. It was my intention, however, to devise a poetic language that would prove even more flexible than these, in which the pronunciation or inflection of words could be freely modified to produce effects ranging from the purely euphonious to the strikingly onomatopoeic. C-1 imposes only conventions affecting melodic shape, and even in this there is a great deal of latitude, as the actual pronunciation of any word may be distributed over as many or as few octaves as the performer deems appropriate.

If C-1 invites the speaker to express literary imagery in vivid, unorthodox ways, it also makes it possible, through a simple process of redefining specific alphabetic/intervallic equivalencies, to create an almost endless variety of new dialects. Just as dialectal words have been assimilated into standard English, so may various Chromatic dialects cross-fertilize one another. Alternate melodic equivalents of a given word or phrase may thus be "imported" into standard C-1, although this practice must needs be limited whenever literal intelligibility of a C-1 text is desirable, for the possible number of C-1 dialects is, from a purely mathematical standpoint, enormous.

The expressive potential of the human voice is largely a function of its physical range. C-1, however, greatly extends that range while bringing into play polyphonic capabilities, an expanded harmonic palette, a virtually infinite variety of tone colors, greater technical facility, and other advantages whose detailed enumeration exceeds the scope of this primer. C-1 was conceived, nevertheless, in classical aesthetic terms, not merely as another means to validate and exploit the pervasive atonality and dissonance characteristic of twentieth-century modernism. As Alexander Pope cautions in his Essays on Criticism, Part II, line 162:

One is also reminded of Archbishop Richard Whately's concern for the "Choice of words, with a view to their Imitative, or otherwise Appropriate sound" (Encyclopedia Metropolitana [1845], I, 279/1, as quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "sound," sense 4.) Dissonance and strangeness are by no means to be construed as ends in themselves. The poet must, of course, first ask himself what he has to say, and if it is worth saying at all, even as he seeks the most appropriate and effective means of communication. In C-1, both tonal and atonal harmonic idioms are happily accommodated.

Poetry is both a written and an aural art form, but it is easy to overlook this simple fact because a poem is rarely recited aloud today and is usually only heard faintly in the reader's imagination. Poetry as aural experience is virtually a dead art, although it is nonsense to countenance the notion that a good poem, like a good child, should be seen and not heard. To neglect the ear for the eye dilutes the quality of a poem and robs the reader of its intrinsic musicality.

Verlaine, in his "Art Poétique," insisted that poetry should be like music above all else: "De la musique avant toute chose." Ironically, most people have been conditioned merely to read poetry and listen to music. But there is no reason why printed poetry should not be music to the ears any more than there is that music should not be poetry for the eyes.

Silent reading, reading aloud to oneself, reading while listening to an actual recitation by another, or simply listening without reading are all different modes of poetic experience. These need not occur in any particular order, although the fullest understanding and enjoyment of a poem certainly involves all four: each mode works together with the others to make a poem the audiovisual entity it truly is. The same is true of music: following a performance while reading (or having read) the score considerably enhances the experience.

The graphic and aural components of poetry and music comprise a Gestalt. To read alone is not enough, for we miss the expressive beauty, richness, and continuity conveyed through the medium of sound. To hear alone is not enough, for we cannot thus discern many structural aspects of a poem or musical composition. The lengths and arrangements of lines or systems on the page have a special aesthetic and semantic significance in their own right. Some poems and scores contain material which is not even intended for recitation that otherwise might be missed, e.g., the names of individual speakers or instruments, performance instructions, explanatory notes, pictorial elements, etc. Poetry and music that are complex syntactically, semantically, grammatically, orthographically, and otherwise can only be illuminated by actual visual experience.

Is conventional human speech or song alone sufficient for all forms of poetic expression? Would not a synthetic language and voice that offer maximal expressive freedom while fully supporting the most vivid, subtly nuanced, technically precise communication offer poets creative opportunities that have thus far been underexplored? With C-1, I believe such a language and voice now exist, and are conducive to a virtually unlimited variety of aesthetic applications.

Because man entered the world naked and vulnerable, he has created artificial skins--textiles and fabrics that enable him to survive and thrive in the most diverse environmental conditions. Because man's legs are comparatively slow and because he was born with neither fins nor wings, he has created artificial bodies that bear him rapidly across the surface of the planet, over and beneath the oceans, and into the sky and the vast spaces beyond.

Similarly, man has for centuries striven to create artificial voices capable of ever greater expressive power. Much has been attained--and will yet be attained--through the poetic and musical means that have already been developed. With the advent of instrumental speech and the digital revolution, however, he can now aspire to a previously unknown degree and kind of poetic communication whose ultimate direction and dimensions are limited only by the imagination.

proteus@newmusicclassics.com