A voice that sounds like an organ. In Venice, research takes us back to the past

Venice is a deeply musical city; this is evident even at the entrance to St Mark’s Basilica: in the ‘Last Judgement’ fresco above the central portal, two angels stand out, playing trumpets. The Lagoon is the final resting place of Igor Stravinsky in the cemetery of San Michele and was also the scene of Richard Wagner’s death. The list of musicians who, from the sixteenth century to the present day, have lived here—even if only for brief periods—testifies to the creative ferment that has animated the canals and streets and which subsequently gave rise to twentieth-century music. In 1964, Luigi Nono presented La fabbrica illuminata at La Fenice for the Biennale, in which Carla Henius’s voice blends with the recorded sounds from the Italsider works in Cornigliano.

In Venice, the voice has always held a privileged place: it is an instrument capable of uniting the ancient and the contemporary and lends itself to experimentation like few others. In recent years, for some prominent female composers, the return to the voice has come via the rediscovery of the pipe organ. These are musicians who have previously worked in electronic music, such as Kali Malone, Sarah Davachi and Kara-Lis Coverdale. Caterina Barbieri co-wrote the music with Malone for Massimo Bartolini’s installation at the Italian Pavilion in 2024 – a scaffolding structure transformed into an organ. Davachi, this year’s Silver Lion winner, has given her latest albums – built around the organ – titles that speak of choirs and languages: The Head as Form’d in the Crier’s Choir and The Will of Tongues.

In this 70th edition of the Biennale Musica, singing appears to be one of the central themes. Last weekend, Davachi presented "Chanters", a work for organ, choir and orchestra, whilst Coverdale composed a new piece – alongside works by Hildegard von Bingen and Arvo Pärt – which the Tallis Scholars performed at St Mark’s. Later on, Barbieri will present a new work for large ensemble, four voices and electronics. On the same evening, the Scottish composer Clarissa Connelly will perform her Canons for eight a cappella voices. As for Keiji Haino, recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement and for half a century a leading figure in Japanese improvisation, he has chosen the hurdy-gurdy, percussion and his own voice for the occasion.

That the exploration draws on the ancient tradition comes as no surprise to those who recall how, right up until the end of the sixteenth century, art music was conceived primarily for voices, and how instruments, even when performed solo, continued to ‘think like a choir’: Bach titled a piece from the Musical Offering Ricercar a 6 – that is, for six voices – which a harpsichordist can play alone. Webern, in orchestrating it between 1934 and 1935, breaks each phrase down into timbral fragments assigned to different instruments, and the interweaving of the six voices reaches the ear through a constantly shifting timbre. The ‘Miserere’ that Gregorio Allegri composed around 1638 for Holy Week in the Sistine Chapel alternates between soft singing and verses in falsobordone, a polyphonic harmonisation of the psalm-like tone that returns to the same few chords at each reprise. In more recent times, Arvo Pärt, following the twelve-tone technique and the collages of the 1960s, pioneered the ‘tintinnabuli’ style, after years of near-silence spent studying Gregorian chant and the polyphonists of Notre-Dame.

In this sense, this year’s Music Biennale, entitled “A Child of Sound”, highlights the need to rediscover the simplicity, immediacy and complete lack of filters that a child might possess when uttering its first cries. Returning to the origins of music, to the voice—that great and natural musical instrument of humankind—also enables experimentation and exploration of untrodden paths. Luciano Berio—who enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the Biennale—made this the focus of his daily work and study alongside Cathy Berberian. “A memory for the future” that we must never lose sight of.