Voices from the Past: compositional approaches to using recorded speech

This paper investigates some of the ways in which composers and sound artists have used recordings of speech, especially in works mediated by technology. It will consider this within a wider context of spoken word, text composition and performance-based genres such as sound poetry. It will attempt to categorise some of the compositional techniques that may be used to work with speech, make specific reference to archive and oral history material and attempt to draw some conclusions.