Saturday, November 17, 2007

Ursonate and The Compleat Beatles

Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate performed by Bok. This is the one you were presumably talking about, Equivocal? Ursonate text here.

Oh...the Beatles? Like this. Heh.

All this via.

2 comments:

equivocal said...
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equivocal said...

Space--

I don't mind Christian Bok's version of Ursonate, but I must say I still much, much prefer Schwitters' own recording of it ( see here; scroll down the page for Schwitters' own extended comments on the piece, which might be especially useful for someone completely baffled by the sonata).

It's possible I prefer the Schwitters version by a long shot because I heard it first and have been listening to it repeatedly, on tape, since 2000, but I also find his version less theatrical and very subtle, rhythmic and timed in its changes in interesting ways.

There is one version of Ursonate I saw recently that I thought was as good as Schwitters' in its own way, though, and that is the very musical "Ursonate Variations" by the brilliant Japanese sound / performance poet, Tomomi Adachi ( see here for the sound file, and here, if you have the bandwidth and want to see how he does it, for the very fun video...