italianish music came about as the result of a confrontation with the bel canto vocal tradition, which i find somewhat uncomfortable to work within. In an attempt to engage with the trained operatic voice as a unique sound or instrument in itself, I consulted vocal treatises like Mathilde Marchesi’s classic Vocal Method, and decided on a particular technique through which to explore the voice: the messa di voce. A challenging technique to master, the messa di voce is essentially a swell on a single tone where the aim is for the vibrato and the vowel to remain consistent while only the dynamic grows and decays. For me, it represents the purest distillation of the sound of this kind of voice.

I lifted a number of examples of messa di voce (among other materials) from predominantly Italian opera arias and used these as found materials. These are warped, recombined, and obliquely referenced, to construct a very different music, but which is nonetheless built on this tradition. Similarly, the text, while originally taken from an 1818 treatise on Italian singing, has been reorganised to the point where what remains can only be described as italian-ish.