Scat
Item
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Score title
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Scat
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Composer
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Augusta Read Thomas
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Program note
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Commissioned and premiered in 2007 by the Walden Chamber Players in Western Massachusetts at a men's Jail and House of Correction, SCAT, scored for flute (or oboe), violin, viola, cello, piano (or harpsichord,) has a duration of 6 minutes.
The title refers to a style of singing where the voice is used in imitation of an instrument, vocalizing either wordlessly or with nonsense words and syllables (e.g. "bippity-bippity-doo-wop-razzamatazz-skoobie-doobie-bee-bop-a-lula-shabazz") often employed by jazz singers who then create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using only their voice. Scat singers do not use the sounds to exactly reproduce the instrumental melody, instead, they improvise with the melody and rhythm and tempo.
In this very short chamber work, the instruments at times are imitating scat singers — who originally would have been imitating instruments — thus alluding to the turnaround, full-circle, ever spiraling and historically long standing exchange between instrumental and singing traditions' fields-of-influence on one another.
Augusta Read Thomas