Label: Preiser Records, Musikalische Jugend Osterreichs
Series: Jeunesse
Format: LP
Genre: Sound Art
Out of stock
Originally “pressed on behalf of the musical youth of Austria” in 1975, this is the second, even rarer pressing on Preiser Records from the late '70s (estimated). The Greek avant-garde composer Anestis Logothetis was noted for his pioneering tape techniques as well for developing his own notation system for composition that incorporated visual symbols meant to be interpreted by the performers. “'Hör!-spiel' / Nekrologlog 1961 / Fantasmata 1960” collects three of his most famous works, realized in Vienna where he spent much of the 1940s-1960s. After completing studies at the music academy there, in the 1950s Logothetis became enamored of 20th Century composers like John Cage and Earle Brown, and moved away from traditional composition for orchestras and performers in favor of fully electronic composition in the late '50s.
The album consists of two text-sound pieces from 1961/1971 and an absolute monster of an early tape-piece: the side-long “Fantasmata 1960”, recorded at the Institut für Elektroakustik Der Musikhochschule In Wien. “Fantasmata” is a key word in the parlance of Western philosophy. Aristotle describes “fantasmata” as images that have their origin in the reminiscence of what has been perceived, and are created through the experience of the sensual perception of individual objects and occurrences. Logothetis thereby meets the core theme of electroacoustic music. Several years later, François Bayle described acousmatic music as a music of fictional spaces and phantom figures – a world between real and imaginary causes.
As sound material, Logothetis uses ecstatically shouting voices from Congo dances and several concretely recorded sounds. With the technical means of the 1960s (tempo variation, ring modulation) a work with a high inner tempo emerges, in which the listeners become groping characters in an unknown sound universe. This river of known and unknown sounds flows into a sounding stream, that of Meditation – a raw, granularly circling soundscape that opens up an archaic world of tonal being. While “Fantasmata” remains Logothetis’ only work without visual realization, there is a 'score' to Meditation, an action symbol which shows the circling on a drum covered with a skin. Logothetis carried out this work on his own, and it was performed in 1963 at Hermann Nitsch’s first public action (Aktion Perinetgasse – “The Blood Organ”) of Viennese Actionism in Galerie Lagergasse.
“Nekrologlog”, a brief audio play of approx. 10 minutes was created in 1961 and was added as the closing address of the audio play “Mantratellurium” in 1970 – as its linguistic structures complemented those of “Mantratellurium” – but, as an independent monologue, was first performed on January 30, 1974 at the “Planetarium Concert for the musical youth”.