Transcendent translations

This post is even more tangential to the Play Every Town project than the last: at least that one was about a keyboard. But it continues the English in translation theme, and anyway this is my blog.

I’ve long been fascinated with outlandish (heh) examples of international English. So much that I wrote a piece setting five choice examples. Here’s the video of the premiere, along with the program notes. 

Lingua Franca (watch on YouTube)

Longfellow’s romantic notion that music is the “universal language of mankind” is not supported by modern scholarship, which suggests that English is today the world’s most widely understood language. Non-native speakers outnumber native almost 3 to 1, so in a sense, those who fancy themselves English’s experts are only conservators of a minority dialect. This idea delights me. These five settings of unedited texts from around the world are an appreciation of the range of global English expression. 

The choppy phrasing and curt punctuation of Rice Noodle inspired the musical setting, which is severe, even authoritarian. Chopstick Wrapper must be seen to be fully appreciated: at the end of the middle section, the performers team up to play the double bass together, bows crossing as they play a certain well-known (lingua franca) children’s piano piece. The music of the outer sections is not authentically Chinese but rather Chinese Restaurant. 

The poetry of Electric Blanket is transcribed word for word from actual consumer packaging, as are the lyrics of all the movements except for “Elevator Music”. Elevator Music takes its text from a sign in a Belgrade hotel; the enigmatic phrase “…alphabetically by national order” led me to imagine elevator traffic as a metaphor for the political ups and downs of the Serbian capital, which has been fought over in more than 100 wars and razed to the ground 44 times. The coda is a mad collage of national anthems representing just a few of the controlling or intervening powers of the past two centuries. 

The set concludes with Ice Tray, a jazzy Joycean rhapsody on the material properties and proper handling of a plastic freezer gadget.

Lingua Franca is dedicated to the memory of my father, an inveterate punster, and to Karel Husa, prince among composers and creator of some choice ESL phrases himself.