Meredith Monk

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Meredith Monk, 2014

Meredith Jane Monk (born November 20, 1942 in Queens , New York City ) is an American singer, dancer, filmmaker, choreographer, and composer. She is considered a pioneer of vocal performance art , a newly created art form that was largely initiated by women in the United States in the 1960s and 70s . She created a complex work of multimedia solo and ensemble pieces, based on her voice, with which she shaped an unmistakable style.

Origin and career

Meredith Monk comes from the fourth generation of a Jewish family of musicians with Russian - Polish roots. The maternal grandmother was a concert pianist who ran a conservatory in Harlem , the grandfather a baritone . Her mother, Audrey Lois Monk (née Zellman), performed as a pop singer , her father, Theodore Glenn Monk, worked as a businessman. She has a sister.

She learned to play the piano and the electronic organ at an early age. In her childhood, Meredith Monk suffered from an eye defect that resulted in movement disorders. Her mother therefore sent her to a rhythmic-musical lesson in Émile Jaques-Dalcroze , through which she developed spatial orientation, body awareness and a sure sense of rhythm.

She studied classical music, theater and modern dance at Sarah Lawrence College . Her most influential teacher was the German-American dancer, choreographer and dance teacher Bessie Schönberg . On the side she sang in rock 'n' roll bands and earned money with folk songs , which she accompanied on the guitar. After completing her studies in 1964, she went to downtown New York, where the first contacts that were important for her development were artists from the Fluxus movement such as Alison Knowles and Charlotte Moorman . The ideas and approaches that John Cage had developed in the late 1930s were also significant for breaking up conventions in music during this period . Another inspiration came from feminist performance art , the center of which was downtown New York, where many galleries and venues for cross-genre art forms were created. Monk first appeared as a dancer and singer in other groups, then increasingly with her own choreographies and as a singer of her own compositions in off-off theaters and churches.

Since the mid-1960s, Monk's music has been Monk's central form of artistic expression and her voice has been her virtuoso instrument, with which she began to experiment while playing the piano as if in trance . She discovered that "within the voice there were limitless possibilities of timbre, texture, landscape, character, gender, ways of sound production," she said in an interview with Deborah Jowitt . "I began to expand my vocal range and experimented with my breath, my diaphragm, vocal gestures such as sobs, whispers, laughter and various head and body resonances". Most of her work starts with the voice. From the beginning, Monk was looking for an emotional sound language. She is of the opinion that "non-verbal music would touch people deeply and that emotions would be released for which we have no words". Dietmar Dath wrote about her vocal art:

"Just as Hegel's whole philosophy consists in accompanying the thought as it thinks, Monk's whole singing is something like the issuing of a voice that can hear itself in amazement while singing."

From the mid-1970s, it established itself internationally. She became known in Germany when she performed her epic opera Vessel about the life of Jeanne d'Arcs in 1980 with around 120 participants in front of the ruins of Anhalter Bahnhof in West Berlin . On the occasion of their 40th stage anniversary, a four-hour music marathon took place in New York in November 2004 .

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Meredith Monk at a concert in the Hamburg FABRIK , at the end of 1986

Meredith Monk has repeatedly performed solo pieces since the beginning of her career. In the early works, in which she accompanied herself with the keyboard , one notices “a strong level of suffering and the existential feeling of the lone fighter”, wrote the musicologist Marie-Anne Kohl. With her performance Our Lady of Late from 1974 she developed the minimalist formal concept that is typical for her, which in 1997 showed itself in "its full maturity" in the solo piece Volcano-Songs , inspired by the art of Zen and the Japanese poetry form Haiku .

At the same time she began to explore the vocal possibilities of choir formations. Her loft in New York, where she lived and worked, gave workshops and performances, was called The House . Under this name she founded an ensemble in 1968 with which she worked on interdisciplinary performances for the first time . With this project, Monk exerted significant influence on many other artists. For example, Bruce Nauman named Meredith Monk as one of the artists who had one of the greatest influences on his artistic work. The first work with a large formation is the theater cantate Juice , which she realized in 1969 on the spiral ramp of the Guggenheim Museum with 85 artists.

In the 1970s and 80s Monk developed the characteristic forms of her multimedia theater, in which she combined voices, music, theater, light, film, dance, ritual and mythical elements with avant-garde art. In doing so, she followed her vision of an original unity of the arts. The protagonists are mostly women who experience a process of transformation on a journey through time and worlds. A figure in self-presentation is often a girl. This is also the case in her important two-part piece Education of the Girlchild: an opera , on which she began to work with her ensemble The House in her loft in 1972 and for which she received an award at the 1975 Venice Biennale . The sworn community of five women in the first part described Monk "as the female version of the knights of the round table ". The solo of the second part, in which the figure transforms from an old woman back into a girl, she performed again in 2008 and 2010 under the title Education of the Girlchild Revisited . In Quarry (1976), an opera for 40 performers about the Second World War, Monk played “a sick child who suffers from febrile hallucinations and experiences the Holocaust in a dreamlike vision ”.

In 1978 she put together a new group under the name Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble , to which the percussionist Collin Walcott belonged, and which was dedicated to the research of new and extended vocal techniques, often in a clearly contrasting manner minimalist instrumental sounds. One of the outstanding works is Dolmen Music for three female and three male voices, violoncello and percussion, released in 1981 by Manfred Eicher's label ECM Records . The title of the seemingly archaic piece refers to the megalithic complex La Roche-aux-Fées in Brittany , which Monk and her ensemble visited in 1977. In the concert performance, the singers sit opposite each other in a stone circle. Like almost all of her compositions, the music was not created on paper or on the piano, but as an active activity during rehearsals. She only prepares scores in advance for ensembles in which she does not make music herself .

In the 1980s she made two films, Ellis Island (1981) and Book of Days (1989). Ellis Island was originally part of the musical theater performance Recent Ruins . Based on historical photos, the artists depict the various immigrant groups arriving in Ellis Island to be accepted into the USA, accompanied by Monk's sonorous song and minimalist music. The American cultural historian Selma Jeanne Cohen wrote about Book of the Days : “Scenes from the medieval world in black and white are mixed with scenes from the modern world in color. In a medieval ghetto, a Jewish girl sees a future with airplanes and television; for her grandfather these are visions of Noah's Ark. The ancient wisdom of the Jewish heritage is passed on from generation to generation. The plague in the medieval world as AIDS in the modern are both shown as threatening destruction. "

Inspired by Alexandra David-Néel's travel stories, Monk wrote Atlas for the first time in 1991, a traditional form of opera with conventional scores. She tried to transfer the techniques developed with her vocal ensemble to the accompanying orchestra under the direction of Wayne Hankin. Atlas is considered a turning point in Monk's work.

Since 1991 she has also composed instrumentals, mostly for piano. Her first symphonic work for choir and orchestra is Possible Sky from 2003 after a commission from Michael Tilson Thomas for the New World Symphony Orchestra he founded . Another orchestral work is string songs from 2004 for the Kronos Quartet .

Her music has been used variously in films such as B. in The Big Lebowski by the brothers Ethan and Joel Coen (1998) and in Jean-Luc Godard's Nouvelle Vague (1990). Her work inspired artists as diverse as Merce Cunningham and Björk .

Awards (selection)

Works (selection)

  • 1966: 16 millimeter earrings , for voice, guitar and tapes
  • 1969: A Theater Cantata , for 85 voices, harp and two violins
  • 1971: Vessel: An Opera Epic , for 75 voices, electr. Organ, dulcimer and accordion
  • 1972: Education of the Girlchild , solo opera
  • 1973: Paris , for solo piano
  • 1976: Songs from the Hill , for solo voice
  • 1979: Dolmen Music , for six voices, cello and percussion
  • 1980: Turtle Dreams , for four voices and two organs
  • 1983: The Games , for 16 voices, synthesizer, keyboards, Flemish bagpipes, bagpipes, Chinese horn and Rauschpfeife
  • 1984: Giant Panda, Chant II , for a cappella choir
  • 1985: Book of Days , for 25 voices, synthesizer and piano
  • 1986: Acts from under and above Ellis Island , for two pianos
  • 1988: Parlor Games , for two pianos
  • 1994: Phantom Waltz , for two pianos
  • 1996: The Politics of Quiet , for ten voices, two keyboards, flugelhorn and violin
  • 1997: Steppe Music , for solo piano
  • 1999: Clarinet Study # 4, for solo clarinet
  • 2003: Possible Sky , for orchestra and voices
  • 2004: Stringsongs , for string quartet
  • 2006: Songs of Ascension , for vocal ensemble and string quartet
  • 2008: Impermanence , vocal ensemble, piano, violin, percussion and woodwinds

Discography

  • Key Compositions 1967–1970, (Increase Records, 1971; Lovely Music, 1977 and 1995)
  • Our Lady of Late (Minona Records, 1973; wergo, 1986)
  • Songs from the Hill / Tablet (wergo, 1979)
  • Dolmen Music (ECM, 1981)
  • Turtle Dreams (ECM, 1983)
  • Do You Be (ECM, 1987)
  • Book of Days (ECM, 1990)
  • Facing North (ECM, 1992)
  • John Cage - Meredith Monk - Anthony De Mare (piano and parts; Koch International Classics, 1992)
  • Atlas. An Opera in Three Parts (ECM, 1993)
  • Monk and the Abbess (Musica Sacra / Richard Westenburg, 1996)
  • Volcano Songs (ECM, 1997)
  • Mercy (ECM, 2002)
  • Impermanence (ECM, 2008)
  • Beginnings (Tzadik, 2009)
  • Songs of Ascension (ECM, 2011)
  • Piano Songs (studio album with Bruce Brubaker and Ursula Oppens , ECM, 2014)

literature

  • Deborah Jowitt (Ed.): Meredith Monk. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1997, ISBN 978-1-55554-154-5 .
  • Theda Weber-Lucks: Meredith Monk. In: Dies .: body voices. Vocal performance art as a new musical genre , Dissertation Humanities, Technical University Berlin 2005, published 2008, pp. 187–207. hdl : 11303/2308 .
  • Marie-Anne Kohl: Vocal Performance Art as a Feminist Practice. Meredith Monk and the artistic power field in Downtown New York, 1964–1979 , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-8376-3223-1 (also: Cologne, University of Music, dissertation, 2014) ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Documentary film

Audio recording

Web links

Commons : Meredith Monk  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ In a program booklet of her play Education of the Girlchild , she invented herself as "Inca-Jew", who was born in Lima , where her mother was on a concert tour. This wrong place of birth was occasionally included in publications later. Source: Marie-Anne Kohl: Vocal performance art as feminist practice. Meredith Monk and the artistic power field in Downtown New York, 1964–1979 , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, p. 342.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Theda Weber-Lucks: Meredith Monk , in: dies .: Body Voices. Vocal performance art as a new musical genre , Dissertation Humanities, Technical University Berlin 2005, published 2008, p. 187.
  2. ^ Marie-Anne Kohl: Vocal performance art as feminist practice. Meredith Monk and the artistic power field in Downtown New York, 1964–1979 , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, p. 342.
  3. ↑ a b Selma Jeanne Cohen: Meredith Monk , Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia , March 1, 2009, accessed July 31, 2016. Jewish Women's Archive .
  4. ^ Marie-Anne Kohl: Vocal performance art as feminist practice. Meredith Monk and the artistic power field in Downtown New York, 1964–1979 , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, p. 166 f.
  5. ↑ Meredith in conversation with Deborah Jowitt, 1998, quoted by Theda Weber-Lucks: Meredith Monk , in: dies .: Körperstimmen. Vocal performance art as a new musical genre , dissertation humanities, Technical University Berlin 2005, published 2008, p. 188.
  6. ^ Marie-Anne Kohl: Vocal performance art as feminist practice. Meredith Monk and the artistic power field in Downtown New York, 1964–1979 , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, p. 20.
  7. ^ Theda Weber-Lucks: Meredith Monk , in: dies .: Body Voices. Vocal performance art as a new musical genre , Dissertation Humanities, Technical University Berlin 2005, published 2008, p. 193.
  8. ↑ a b Dietmar Dath: Meredith Monk for the Seventy: Soloist in the Chorus of Contradictions. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 20, 2012. Retrieved May 17, 2017 .
  9. ^ Marie-Anne Kohl: Vocal performance art as feminist practice. Meredith Monk and the artistic power field in Downtown New York, 1964–1979 , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, p. 189.
  10. ^ Theda Weber-Lucks: Meredith Monk , in: dies .: Body Voices. Vocal performance art as a new musical genre , Dissertation Humanities, Technical University Berlin 2005, published 2008, p. 190.
  11. ^ Marie-Anne Kohl: Vocal performance art as feminist practice. Meredith Monk and the artistic power field in Downtown New York, 1964–1979 , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, p. 340.
  12. ^ Marianne Goldberg: "Personal Mythologies: Meredith Monks Education of the Girlchild ", in: Deborah Jowitt (Ed.): Meredith Monk , Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-8018-5539-9 , p. 49.
  13. ^ Theda Weber-Lucks: Meredith Monk , in: dies .: Body Voices. Vocal performance art as a new musical genre , Dissertation Humanities, Technical University Berlin 2005, published 2008, p. 190.
  14. ^ Marie-Anne Kohl: Vocal performance art as feminist practice. Meredith Monk and the artistic power field in Downtown New York, 1964–1979 , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, p. 313.
  15. ^ Marie-Anne Kohl: Vocal performance art as feminist practice. Meredith Monk and the artistic power field in Downtown New York, 1964–1979 , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, p. 21.
  16. ^ Marie-Anne Kohl: Vocal performance art as feminist practice. Meredith Monk and the artistic power field in Downtown New York, 1964–1979 , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, pp. 279, 312/313.
  17. ^ Theda Weber-Lucks: Meredith Monk , in: dies .: Body Voices. Vocal performance art as a new musical genre , Dissertation Humanities, Technical University Berlin 2005, published 2008, p. 319.
  18. ^ Zachary Woolfe: A Singular World That Won't Fade Away. Meredith Monk Celebrates 50 Years of Work. In: The New York Times . November 28, 2014, accessed January 10, 2017 .
  19. ^ New York News, Obies, Village Voice. (No longer available online.) In: villagevoice.com. December 5, 2012, archived from the original on December 5, 2012 ; accessed on May 17, 2017 .
  20. ↑ National Medal of Arts 2014. In: arts.gov. National Endowment for the Arts, 2014, accessed May 17, 2017.
  21. ↑ Newly elected members 2019. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed May 30, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Monk, Meredith
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Monk, Meredith Jane (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American singer, composer and performance artist
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Queens , New York City , New York , United States
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 5, 2017 .