Walter Marchetti
For the first half of Marchetti\'s life, he was, in his words, \"condemned\" to work at various bread-and-butter jobs, which included: grape harvester, brick-layer, saddler, wine-seller, metal-shearer, turner, frame welder, and an ample \"etc.\" besides. In music he is self-taught. His numerous attempts to carry out serious musical studies came to nothing, he says, due to feelings that the \"establishment\" is a complete farce. In the early \'60s he moved to Spain and founded the ZAJ group with his close friend and major collaborator Juan Hidalgo. Together they realized \"an infinity of projects in and out of music.\" His works have close aesthetic ties with the activities of Fluxus. He incorporates a great deal of concrete sound-material into his compositions, such as recordings of traffic noise or the sound of stones dropped down wells, and is known in the world of visual arts for his installations and sculptural modifications of pianos, i.e. covering them with small lights, or encasing them in red brick.
For the first half of Marchetti\'s life, he was, in his words, \"condemned\" to work at various bread-and-butter jobs, which included: grape harvester, brick-layer, saddler, wine-seller, metal-shearer, turner, frame welder, and an ample \"etc.\" besides. In music he is self-taught. His numerous attempts to carry out serious musical studies came to nothing, he says, due to feelings that the \"establishment\" is a complete farce. In the early \'60s he moved to Spain and founded the ZAJ group with his close friend and major collaborator Juan Hidalgo. Together they realized \"an infinity of projects in and out of music.\" His works have close aesthetic ties with the activities of Fluxus. He incorporates a great deal of concrete sound-material into his compositions, such as recordings of traffic noise or the sound of stones dropped down wells, and is known in the world of visual arts for his installations and sculptural modifications of pianos, i.e. covering them with small lights, or encasing them in red brick.
Echo: The Images of Sound (Book)
**Very rare original catalogue. Comes with the 10 pages original concerts program leporello** Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held November 22 - January 6, 1985. Text by Paul Panhuysen, Ellen Fullman, Godfried-Willem Raes, Anton van Gemert, Bart Lootsma, Arnold Dreyblatt, Leon van Noorden, George Smits, and Hugh Davies. Artists include Max Eastly, Takeisha Kosugi, Walter Marchetti, Ellen Fullman, Godfried-Willem Raes, Horst Rickels, Rik van Lersel, Giancarlo Cardini, Juan…
Antibarbarus
A reissue of Antibarbarus, issued as a compact disc in 1998, was the first edition Walter Marchetti released on Alga Marghen. The Antibarbarus cycle of five pieces makes use of original tapes coming from the same recording sessions that originated some of Marchetti's major musical works realized in the '80s. This former series of works presented some homogeneous and untouched sound sources in the "concrete" status of their inner - and necessarily chaotic - level of entropy. Nevertheless this ope…
In Terram Utopicam
2010 release. Walter Marchetti is one of the most original and controversial pre-Fluxus authors. In this work he frees all of his sophisticated poeticism. In Terram Utopican includes "J'aimerais jouer avec un piano qui aurait une grosse queue" (1974/75) and "Per la sete dell'orecchio" (1981). The 16-page booklet presents the original score of "J'aimerais jouer," photos of the performances in Milano and at the Venice Biennale, and the reproduction of the original In Terram Utopicam LP layout.…
Vandalia
2010 release. With Vandalia Walter Marchetti is focusing his concrete and radical themes. Also including is an homage to John Cage. Action Music! Vandalia includes 'Perpetuum Mobile' (1981), 'Song for John Cage' (1985) and 'Le Secche Del Delirio' (1989). The 8-page booklet presents the photo of the 'Perpetuum Mobile' performance at Musicalia in 1981, the score of 'Song for John Cage', the photos of two 'Musica Da Camera' installations, as well as the reproduction of the original Vandalia CD layo…
Per La Sete Dell'orecchio
2010 release. This LP includes Walter Marchetti's "Per La Sete Dell'orecchio" (1981), previously privately issued on the LP of the same title. This reissue also includes "Song for John Cage" (1985), which has never been available on vinyl before. The LP sleeve reproduces the "Song for John Cage" score. The full-color inner sleeve reproduces the original Per La Sete Dell'orecchio LP layout. All texts are published both in English and Italian.
First included in a 5LP box set together with other 4 …
Concerto Per La Mano Sinistra In Un Solo Movimento
The Concerto For The Left Hand In One Movement, for piano, is the last unpublished composition of Walter Marchetti to be performed in public before the death of the author on May 12, 2015. This performance by Reinier van Houdt was recorded on April 29, 2015, at Onder De Linden in Valthermond, Netherlands, and is presented with liner notes by Gabriele Bonomo, translated from the Italian by Philip Corner. Composed in 1994, the Concerto For The Left Hand belongs to an ongoing series of works writte…
De musicorum infelicitate
Walter Marchetti "De musicorum infelicitate" is now presented in a new 2LP edition limited to only 70 copies, issued to celebrate the sound installation created for the Oeuvres sonores event conceived in collaboration with the New Media Department of Centre Pompidou in Paris. This new edition also includes the Centre Pompidou 16-page program as well as a copy of the now sold out Bullshit Detector magazine published by Fondazione Mudima in 2001 on the occasion of the Walter Marchetti installati…
Natura Morta
LP version, previously released in the Il Divano Dell'orecchio 5LP box (ALGA 083LP). It’s abundance is a foil to the hauntingly minimal musical piece. A very simple sequence of piano accidents, according to Robert Ashley one of the most beautiful piano pieces ever recorded. Natura Morta includes the piece with the same title from 1980. "The LP sleeve reproduces a photo of the performance at Milanopoesia in 1988, as well as the text In My Music. The full color inner sleeve reproduces a photo of t…
La Caccia
LP version, previously released in the Il Divano Dell'orecchio 5LP box (ALGA 083LP). "Includes the same materials as the original 1974 Cramps LP titled La Caccia (1965). The LP sleeve reproduces the original scores, photos of both the 1965 ZAJ performances and of Walter Marchetti recording La Caccia. The full-color inner sleeve reproduces the original La Caccia LP layout.
Il divano dell'Orecchio
Mindblowing box! this is the only authorized reissue of all Walter Marchetti original recordings previously released by Cramps Records. A 5LP box set including "La caccia", In terram utopicam", "Per la sete dell'orecchio", "Natura morta" and "Vandalia". The most amazing thing about music is its exterior aspect. High, vertical, translucent, almost turgid, maybe a bit too monolithic. One should, in any case, give a lot of attention to the large number of interstices which lead to the centre of the…
Alla ricerca del silenzio perduto - Il treno di John Cage
Included in 160-page, hardcover book with bilingual (Italian/English) 'Any and all sounds are music : the sounds that surround us, whether we are in a concert hall or not...' 'We can begin from this quote by John Cage to unearth the traces of one of the most emblematic happenings of our time. In June 1978 Cage's Train marked a watershed in musical culture. It drew a line which parted those who think of music as an artistic expression based on a tonal system (or beyond that, on any system at all)…
October 25th, 2001. Merkin Concert Hall, NYC
In 2001 Thomas Buckner organized a series of concerts at the Merkin Hall in New York City asking contemporary classic composers to perform together with another artist of their choice. When Robert Ashley – already one of the most anticipated guests – decided to invite his old friend Walter Marchetti to perform together, the peak event of the series was set. It was the first concert of Italian composer Marchetti in the States for more than 30 years.The night of October 25th, 2001, the audience at…
Rumori alla Rotonda
Live recording at the Rotonda del Pellegrini, Milan, January 21st, 1959 featuring John Cage, Morton Feldman, Juan Hidalgo, Leopoldo La Rosa, and Walter Marchetti. Among all the events involving John Cage during the long stay in Europe that followed his controversial appearance at Darmstadt Ferienkurse in September 1958, the concert he held in Milan on January 21st perhaps represents a less well known episode.
Featuring Cage's intervention both as composer and performer of one's own work as well …
Utopia andata e ritorno
2006 release. Music: the foundation of that presence in which we find ourselves shows itself as pure negative. Everything is founded on a demonstration of its own negativity: as awareness of its being negative, and does not look for an escape into a future presence that is an objective future, but, accepting its negativity, makes of this self-negation the real act, the true reality -- the true foundation, the real and actual continuity: this is music's sense. Utopia Andata e Ritorno is the…
The bird of paradise
Limited to 200 copies only, and long out of print nowadays, Walter Marchetti's Bird of Paradise: Hunting in the City. Performance time: from dawn to dusk. Leave your home, with a cool head, and carrying a briefcase full of birdcalls, of the kind used by hunters, as well as a portable tape recorder, slung across your back on a carrying strap. You will use it, at the proper time, to play a tape, which has also been placed in the briefcase. Once outside, you begin your performance of 'The Hunt' by…
Nei mari del Sud. Musica in secca
Walter Marchetti's Nei mari del Sud may be regarded as the 'epitome' work of all his recent musical output. Firstly for it represents the original re-elaboration of a former work achieved in 1982; secondly, the manipulation techniques here applied rise in the same principles formerly developed for recording the Antibarbarus set of pieces, a cycle to which the new work therefore refers in terms of an ideal continuity, though it preserves some peculiar characters strictly connected with the source…