George Antheil, Erik Satie

Now, which are the points of contact between these two composing gentlemen? "In both composers, a childlike quality shows in their indifference (or impartiality) towards the utilizable musical material: 'sophisticated' and 'lesser' styles, ragtime and music hall, neo-gothic and bitonality, typing machine and doorbell, jocular or praising quotes – everything is linked with everything, without any previous weighing and selection, without preconditions, following a kind of anarchic play instinct. [...] The common fundamental principle in their compositional work is the modular succession of separate elements, the order of which appears arbitrary, aimless. There is always the possibility of continuing in a different way –'anything goes'." (Harry Vogt & Reinhard Peters) Even though Satie's cycle Sports et divertissements was inspired by twenty drawings by the caricaturist Charles Martin, and Antheil's La femme 100 têtes by Max Ernst's collage novel of the same title: but when it came to achieving their objects each composer took the line of greatest rebelliousness in his own special way, sometimes circuitously, sometimes directly. And Benedikt Koehlen knows how to awaken this very quality in the music in his own incomparable way.