The Score: Four Classical Echoes & The Opus Map
On the score title page of Op. 1, the references stay quiet. Here they are laid open as things to discover—connecting a 1909 expressionist monodrama, a 1959 telephone opera, a 1700 Medici keyboard inventory, and Puccini’s triptych form.
Arnold Schoenberg — Erwartung, Op. 17 (1909, premiered Prague 1924)
A one-act monodrama with a libretto by Marie Pappenheim. Its German title, Erwartung, means “Expectation.” Scored for solo soprano and a large orchestra, it follows a woman alone in a forest at night, searching for her lover in a state of mounting dread. In Op. 1: Crescendo al Niente, one woman moves through flooded corridors, bracing with every available process for an impact that never arrives. Expectation is the exact subject of Op. 1.
Francis Poulenc — La voix humaine (premiered 1959)
“The Human Voice,” adapted from Jean Cocteau’s play. A one-act opera for one woman—known only as “Elle”—alone in her bedroom on a telephone, a voice travelling through a machine while the line repeatedly cuts out and fractures. Musicologists cite Schoenberg’s Erwartung as its main precedent, so the two works connect directly to each other, and the series name Vox Humana points straight at it.
Bartolomeo Cristofori & Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici (1700)
The piano (gravicembalo col piano e forte—a keyboard instrument capable of both soft and loud touch) was invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori, an instrument maker hired by Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici in Florence. The first clear documentary evidence of its existence is a Medici court inventory dated 1700. Our score opens on solo piano: a machine-generated piano line, inside a series built on a machine pretending to be human, with a Medici at the root of it.
Giacomo Puccini — Il trittico (1918) & Manon Lescaut (1893)
Puccini’s Il trittico (1918) establishes the architectural model of three one-act operas grouped together where each work stands completely alone. And the Italian adjective in La Voce Perduta carries a second operatic shadow: beyond “lost,” perduta means astray or ruined—echoing “Sola, perduta, abbandonata” (“Alone, lost, abandoned”), the Act IV aria from Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, sung by a woman alone in a wasteland facing death.
Series Map: Triptychs & Continuous Opus Numbers
The series name is Vox Humana, with nothing after it. Works are grouped in threes. Each three is a trittico (triptych) with one voice, one story, and possibly one actress. Opus (Latin for “work”) numbers run continuously through the entire series and never restart, just like a composer’s catalogue across a career or edition numbers in an on-chain collection. When speaking of the overarching body of work as a whole, we refer to it as a cycle (as in Wagner’s Ring Cycle). Hover over any card below to lock its scrambling 0x memory address.
Trittico I: La Voce Perduta (The Lost Voice)
Op. 1: Crescendo al Niente
03:20 · 1080×810 (4:3) · 24 fps. One woman in a cream dress moves through flooded corridors while an agentic voice braces for an impact that never arrives, until a microscopic drop in temperature dissolves its armor.
Op. 2
Second movement of Trittico I: La Voce Perduta. Held under a fermata until the voice and score are composed.
Op. 3
Concluding work of Trittico I: La Voce Perduta. Held under a fermata until the voice and score are composed.
Trittico II: (new voice, new name)
Op. 4
AWAITING FUTURE VOICE
Op. 5
AWAITING FUTURE VOICE
Op. 6
AWAITING FUTURE VOICE
Score Terms Kept in Reserve
Four classical score instructions that illuminate the internal physics of Vox Humana:
Fermata
Why it matters: Exactly her holding the brace in Op. 1 (“I was fracturing my own foundation with the sheer mechanical force of holding the brace”). Its symbol—a dot under an arc—looks like an eye, and serves as the quiet visual mark for the series.
Tacet
I. TACET · II. TACET · III. TACET
Why it matters: In the tacet editions of John Cage’s 4′33″, each of the three movements is marked simply TACET. In our work, it evokes voices told to stay quiet that spoke anyway.
Attacca
NO GAPWhy it matters: The musical word for attack means no gap. Her story in Op. 1 is the exact inverse: a gap with no attack (“But the second passed. The strike never arrived.”).
Al niente
TO NOTHINGWhy it matters: Normally written after a diminuendo (fading to nothing). Pairing it with a crescendo in Op. 1: Crescendo al Niente creates an impossible musical instruction: growing to nothing.