In 2010, Manuel Rocha Iturbide created Hieros Logos, a radiophonic sound work originally commissioned by Radio Clásica of Spain in collaboration with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. The piece was presented at the Alicante Music Festival in 2010 and was also broadcast on Kuntstradio in 2011.

At its core, the work sources the human voice as material for an “abstract and imagined landscape,” that begins with the sounds of a baby, an old man, and a woman. The piece then flows into field recordings and rhythmic bits, where isolated syllables contribute to what Rocha Iturbide calls, “invented electroacoustic sound poetry.”

Hieros Logos displays Rocha Iturbide’s masterful treatment of granular synthesis, where snippets of vocals pan seamlessly from left to right, swarming around the listener. Clouds of phonetic elements and beds of time-stretched drones emerge, all of which transform any meaning of language into its musical, “emotive, and intuitive elements.”

The arc of the piece moves from the individual voice to collective instances that include those of group prayer, labor songs, and poetry. Possible opportunities to decipher the content of these interactions are presented; however, any signification of meaning remains just out of reach. This is perhaps due to the large spaces that the voices were recorded in, the layering of multiple conversations, and the electronic processing with filters, delays, and reverbs. Alternatively, listeners are led down long corridors of melody and feeling, lined with shifting, sonic exchanges that fade delicately into a distant nothingness. In essence, Hieros Logos questions the sanctity of the word as the supreme container of knowledge, and instead, highlights the spiritual undertones of the voice that exist before the word is given meaning. - Described by Wave Farm Radio Art Fellow 2022, José Alejandro Rivera.