The Sursiks

The Sursiks: I Didn't Know I Was Singing

by Brad Glanden
June 6, 2006

The musicality of human speech has been a point of interest for a number of composers, among them Schoenberg, Partch, and Jancek, but the craft of building compositions around carefully notated spoken word recordings remains ripe for exploration. Scott Johnson pioneered the technique with John Somebody, Steve Reich popularized it with Different Trains, and Rene Lussier arguably perfected it on Le tresor de la langue. The Sursiks' application of this compositional method, I Didn't Know I Was Singing, replicates the ...