Ghosts and Monsters: Contributors’ Notes

LMJ 8 CD C O M P A N I O N Ghosts and Monsters: Contributors' Notes MEMORIAL ODE ON THE DEATH OF VLADIMIR ILYICH LENIN BY ALEXANDER ABRAMOWTCH KREJN Christian von Borries, Kantstraße 154 A, D-10623 Berlin, Germany. Translated by Matthias Osterwold. In the mid-1920s, Alexander Krejn, already an elder representative of the generation of Russian-Jewish composers, was commissioned by Anatolij Lunacarskij's "Peoples Committee for Education" to produce a new composition. Krejn, a dedicated follower of the October Revolution, accepted the commission and composed a large orchestra piece in commemoration of Lenin's death. This piece, the Memorial Ode on the Death of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Opus 40, premiered in 1927 in Moscow. The score was printed in an edition of 150 copies by the State Publishing Company, but the music was soon forgotten ; in 1933 Krejn, decorated as "Meritorious Art Worker," attempted to gain further attention for himself with another political piece, USSR—Commando Brigade of the World Proletariat . But by that time Stalinism and anti-Semitism were already too far developed—in 1951 Krejn died, entirely unknown in Moscow. In autumn 1997, while conducting research on music of the early days of the Soviet Union, I followed the tracks of Krejn and, with the friendly support of Inna Barssowa of Moscow's Tchaikovsky Conservatory, found a copy of the score. The score was in the library of the Composers Association where—due to lack of funds—lighting and heating had been switched off, whilejust a stone's throw away the boulevard to Tverskaja Uliza gleamed under bright lights on the occasion of the 850th anniversary of the founding of Moscow. I later prepared the orchestral parts, in nightly sessions in Berlin, with the help of a copy machine, scissors and glue. The Berlin Symphony Orchestra turned out to be quite open to this music: they played with enthusiasm and left the Siemensvilla after the recording session on 16January 1998 in a very good mood and with the Internationale on their lips. The idea of a "re-historification" of the recording emerged in a discussion with Ghosts and Monsters CD curator Matthias Osterwold. Osterwold and I were occupied with the question of how historical distance could be made audible; the notion of treating the technical means of reproduction as an aesthetic parameter excited us both. ESSAY John Cage (1912-1992) Thefollowing text byJohn Cage is about the installation o/Essay at theEspai Poblenou in Barcelona, 1991. Essay was made at the Centerfor Computer Music at Brooklyn College of the City University ofNew York, CharUs Dodge, director, with the assistance of VictorFriedberg , Frances White and Kenneth Worthy, and at Synesthetics Inc. with the assistance ofPaul Zinman. Essay is short for Writings through the Essay: On the Duty ofCivil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau). There are eighteen of them. They are mesostics (like an acrostic but having the string of letters down the middle rather than down the edge; a given letter does not occur between it and the preceding letter of the string) on Erik Satie's title Messe des Pauvres. Thoreau said, "The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor." Satie was known as Monsieur le Pauvre. He had no interest in saving money. He preferred something he could use, a handkerchief, a watch, an umbrella, and these he bought not singly but in quantity. All of the words that are used in a single writing through are removed from the source text for a subsequent writing through. Thus the series of writings through tends towards shorter and shorter texts. The series was continued until the nineteenth which being incomplete brought it to an end. It is one part of a collection of materials, some of them musical, most of them literary, called The First Meeting of the Satie Society. Essay was made in two forms, one unstratified, and one stratified. For both forms readings giving nine seconds to each stanza of all eighteen writings through were superimposed . For the unstratified form the voice pitch was kept constant by compressing or expanding a...