cd
edition: 200
new plastic music
2007
- a christmas play for joseph cornell
this limited edition was created as a holiday release for winter 2007, and was based on a score by george brecht from his water yam scores. the score reads:
a christmas play
for joseph cornell.
empty snow-covered field, frosted horizon sun glaring through the mist. in the near distance a bathtub lies on its side, open toward us.
first child: do you see that dark figure behind the creche?
second child: (does not speak)
1959 – 62
i used field recordings from norway as the empty snow covered field, frosted horizon, and sun through mist. i tapped my bathtub with mallets as the bathtub in the near distance, and used my voice as both child voices. i also added the sounds of a 1930’s home made christmas recording, and a vietnamese instrument purchased by my family several years ago as a gift. the cover photo was a found snapshot from 1959 that certainly reminded me of some of cornell’s boxes.
- reviews:
steve roden has long been interested in the work of fluxus artist george brecht, and here he realises brecht’s a christmas play for joseph cornell. actually brecht’s score is so brief it can be quoted in full “empty snow-covered fields, frosted horizon sun glaring through the mist. in the near distance a bathtub lies on its side, open toward us. first child: do you see that dark figure behind the creche? second child: (does not speak)”.
egiven that everything in the score has to be heard, or at least implied in sound, rather than seen, roden began by recording an empty snow-covered field (frosted horizon sun through mist) in norway, and the tin bathub in the near distance (tapped with mallets to make it sound and the tappings made into several rhythmic loops). in a light, frail voice he sings rather than speaks the words of the first child, varying phrase and pitch as he goes along. there are additional sounds too: a 1930’s metropolitan novelties christmas record and an unspecified vietnamese string instrument. by the 20th minute, the singing has faded away and the stringed instrument’s looped phrases and multitracked percussiveness (like a field of mechanical cicadas) takes its place to indicate the absence of a response. after a short silence, the final three minutes consist of reworked morsels of sound, one of which is the looped and filtered crackle of the christmas record moving from side to side in the stereo mix. as with much of roden’s best work, the sounds are dlicate and the manipulations are deft.
like joseph cornell’s work, roden’s piece is boxed, in this case boxed by the loudspeakers on which it is heard, and, like brecht’s christmas play, it’s rather enigmatic.
brian marley, the wire # 291, may 2008
---