THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS, EVEN. ERRATUM MUSICAL (1913) by Marcel Duchamp.  

Realization by Donald Knaack
(Manuscript/Mrs. Marcel Duchamp. Time: 15:04)

The Erratum Musical bears the same title as Duchamp's "Large Glass". It proposed an elaborate compositional process utilizing chance operations to create a new musical alphabet. The score consists of a manuscript that describes the compositional process and how to realize it. Duchamp states that the composition may be performed on a player piano, mechanical organ or any other new instruments for which the virtuoso intermediary is suppressed. Once an instrument has been chosen, the compositional process may begin. The process requires the following: a large funnel, five open-connected wagons and numbered balls. There must be one numbered ball for each sound (timbre and/or pitch) the chosen instruments) is capable of producing.

Each one of the five wagons represents a predetermined time period. The balls are all placed into the funnel and fall at random into the wagons which are pulled under the funnel. Once the funnel is empty, and all the wagons have passed under, the balls are removed from each wagon and notated in sequence of removal. The duration of each note is determined by the number of balls in a given wagon in relation to the assigned time period of that wagon (e.g., numerous balls in a wagon = less proportioned-space between notes; fewer balls = more proportioned-space between notes). Dynamics are left to chance in each performance. The completion of the process yields one period with five sections. The process may be repeated if additional periods are desired.

For my realization I chose to make new percussion instruments from glass that suppress the virtuoso intermediary. Glass was chosen because of Duchamp's interest and work with glass and transparency. The instruments include twelve types of wind chimes, a xylophone made of glass rods, a xylophone made of bottles, wine glasses, tube chimes and glass maracas. There are 24 instruments and 95 timbres.

There are three simultaneous process-realizations on this recording.

DONALD KNAACK, Percussionist. Recorded, remixed and mastered at Atlantic Recording Studios, New York, N.Y. Recording & remix engineer: Bobby Warner. Mastering engineer: George Piros. PRODUCED BY JLHAN MIMAROGLU. (r) (c) 1977 Finnadar Records  Printed in U.S.A. Donald Knaack has performed with the Louisville Orchestra, Manhattan Percussion Ensemble and the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, State University of New York at Buffalo. His performances include concerts in the U.S. and Europe, premieres of percussion solos by Charles Camilleri, Luis DePablo and Yannis Xenakis. Mr. Knaack is a recipient of a 1976 CAPS Award.

Notes by DONALD KNAACK

Donald Knaack wishes to acknowledge: Harald Bode, John Cage, Walter Gajewski, Robert Moog.


From CRI SD 547:

William Kraft has just completed a four year term as the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Composer- in-Residence and Director of its performing arm for contemporary music, the New Music Group, under the auspices of the Philharmonic for the first year and of the Meet the Composer program for the subsequent three years. Previously, Kraft had been a member of the Philharmonic's percussion section for 8 years and its principal timpanist for 18 years, during which time he had also been Assistant Conductor for 3 seasons.

Kraft received his B.A. cum laude (1951) and his master's degree (1954) from Columbia University, where he received two Anton Seidl Fellowships. His principal instructors were Jack Beeson, Seth Bingham, Henry Cowell, Henry Brant, Erich Hertzmann, Paul Henry Lang, Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky; he received training in percussion from Morris Goldenberg and in timpani from Saul Goodman.

As a composer, Kraft has been the recipient of numerous awards and commissions including two Guggenheim Fellowships; two Ford Foundation commissions; a fellowship from the Huntington Hartford Foundation; grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts; the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Record Award; the Norlin/MacDowell Fellowship; the Club 100 Distinguished Artist of Los Angeles Award; the ASCAP Award; the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award (2nd place); the NACUSA Award; first place in the Contemporary Record Society competition; commissions from the Library of Congress and the U.S. Air Force Band; and appointment as resident scholar at the Rockefeller Center for Creative Studies in Italy.

Kraft's compositions have been performed by the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Houston Symphonies; the New York, Los Angeles and Rochester Philharmonics; the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; Collage (Boston), the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Contemporary Music Forum (Washington, D.C.), the Kronos Quartet, Speculum Musicae and others. Many of these renown performing groups have commissioned and premiered Kraft's works. He has also scored for film and television.

In addition to his compositional activities, Kraft has been active as a conductor: he was for three seasons Assistant Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and has served as musical director of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra of Los Angeles. He has held positions as Visiting Professor of Composition at University of Southern California, Guest Lecturer in Composition at the California Institute of the Arts, on the faculty of the Banff Centre for the Performing Arts, and is a frequent lecturer at festivals and concert series. In 1986, Kraft was Composer-in-Residence at the Cheltenham International Music Festival in Cheltenham, England, and in his second year as Composer-in-Residence at Chapman College (Los Angeles). He has served on the Board of Monday Evening Concerts; on the Music Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts; and is currently Chairman of the ASCAP Board of Review and an Honorary Director of the Festival of Learning and Performing in Orange County, California.

Kraft's works have been widely recorded on the Angel, Crystal, Delos, Golden Crest, London, Louisville, Orion, Protone and Townhall record labels. This is his debut on CRI.

Des Imagistes

"An 'Image' is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time... It is the representation of such a 'complex' instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits..."

-Ezra Pound

Two of the five poems on which this piece is based are by Ezra Pound; the other three are by poets-e.e. cummings, Everett Frost and Barbara Kraft-profoundly concerned with and influenced by Pound's works and aesthetics. The poems were chosen particularly for their imagery and musically evocative substance.

Des Imagistes was originally titled, during the writing stage, Hexagrammoid, because the number 6 played such as integral role in the concept of the piece: six players positioned in the shape of a hexagram, many families of six instruments; pitched instruments grouped into complimentary hexachords; and many physical and acoustical considerations derived from aspects of the hexagram, e.g., the second poem "Sestina: Altaforte" being essentially set as a double trio between players I- III-V and II-IV-VI.

Eventually the title became Des Imagistes, taken from the anthology of that name put together by Pound. The exploitation of the hexagram was clearly subservient to the larger desire to put into sound what the poets had put into words: to capture the colors and auras of cummings' "stinging gold"; the clangorous mentality of Pound's medieval warrior in "Sestina: Altaforte"; the suspension of materiality in Barbara Kraft's "Strung on Some Unseen Web"; the gentle loss in the work of Pound scholar Everett Frost in his "11/2/72: E.P." (the date of Pound's death).

Des Imagistes represents the fruition of a long- standing desire to create a large work in which, by the use of cross-cueing and similar interactive devices, the percussion ensemble would function without a conductor.

Des Imagistes was commissioned by the Percussive Arts Society for performance at its national festival, March 26-27, 1974.

--William Kraft


From Philips 836.992 DSY:

Michel Puig : Provisoires agglomerates

Préoccupé d'une expression forte, directe et globale, Michel Puig, né en 1930, ne cesse de poursuivre depuis au moins dix ans de passionnantes recherches dans le domaine du théâtre en musique A travers "Stigmates" (1961), "Les Urbanistes" (1963), ses musiques de scène pour "L'Architecte et l'Empereur d'Assyrie" d'Arrabal ou pour " Ajax ", à travers même son " Evangile de la Passion" (1962) ou son "Invasion pour orchestre" (1967) il s'efforce de conjuguer toutes les violences instrumentales de notre temps avec toutes les suggestions de la voix humaine poussée hors de ses propres limites, pour rendre compte de tous les élans et de toutes les misères de l'homme.

Les " Provisoires agglomérats ", poème à mettre en scène, sur un texte de Georges Malte, ont été représentés au Théâtre des Drapiers à Strasbourg (1966), au Festival d'Avignon (1967) au Théâtre de l'Epée-de-Bois, puis au Musée d'Art Moderne à Paris (1967). Le sujet évoque les horreurs consécutives à une explosion atomique. D'après les études scientifiques de Jacques Rémy Georges Malte a conçu un livret qui, plus que d'une quelconque action dramatique, se nourrit d'une profusion d'images et de cris situés dans un univers intemporel mais qui pourrait tout aussi bien être le nôtre demain. Michel Puig, à son tour, a opéré une véritable transmutation de ce matériau en se servant à la fois d'une bande magnétique préalablement réalisée et de six groupes de percussions. A ces éléments de base, s'ajoutent une percussion solo (batterie jazz et " tapan " yougoslave), une voix de femme qui fait entendre des gémissements, des hurlements et des sons inarticulés, et un récitant qui clame ou chante le texte.

La bande magnétique ouvre et conclut par une sorte de " choeur " qui donne fo^ bien l'impression de la multitude. Au milieu, deux parties principales, l'une construite, l'autre ouverte, libre comme un récit. Les percussions ne font pas que déclencher d'apocalyptiques cataclysmes, mais déploient un commentaire sonore de métal, de bois ou de peaux, d'une profusion saisissante. Les voix, porteuses ou non de mots, donnent à ces visions, d'un cauchemar possible une dimension humaine qui nous fait mieux mesurer les dangers qui nous menacent et notre péché d'indifférence. Devant une oeuvre d'une telle puisssance, d'une telle générosité, on renonce à l'analyse. On se laisse porter, écarteler par les visions terribles. Avec " Le grand combat" que Witold Lutoslawski a mis en musique dans ses "Trois poèmes d'Henri Michaux", les " Provisoires agglomérats " de Michel Puig sont parmi les créations les plus drues et les plus émouvantes qui aient puisé dans l'inquiétude de l'homme contemporain les ressorts d'un nouvel expressionnisme dramatique.

Maurice FLEURET