Words on Wordlessness

In September of 1957, the BBC produced an adventurous radio programme. As part of their ‘Music Talks’ series, they aired an analysis of a Mozart String Quartet by critic and broadcaster Hans Keller. The trick was that this ‘Music Talk’ didn’t involve any talking – it was a ‘Wordless Functional Analysis’, as Keller came to call his method. He had composed analytical interludes that weave between the movements of a particular piece of music in real time, and which were meant to express something about that piece without leaning on technical terminology, or any language at all, for explanation.

Words on Wordlessness is a podcast devoted to examining Keller’s experimental method of communicating about music through music, as well as some important questions about instrumental music and its role in our lives that are raised by listening to his wordless analyses. Each series of the podcast will feature a complete recording of one of Keller’s wordless analyses. Host Nicky Swett discusses particular insights to be found in that analysis and Keller’s many strategies for presenting musical ideas without any language. Podcast sessions also include interviews with musicians, scholars, and scientists, who listen to his analysis and respond to the experience of engaging with musical ideas through a strictly musical medium.

Nicky Swett

Cellist, writer, and music researcher Nicky Swett is in the final stages of a PhD in the Music Department at the University of Cambridge, where he is a Gates Scholar. His research investigates the wordless music analyses of Hans Keller from historical, analytical, and psychological perspectives. He has served as a programme annotator for many concert presenters, including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Music@Menlo, the BBC, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, and Carnegie Hall. As a performer, he has served as the principal cellist of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and been heard in recital across the United States and Europe.