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Diotima hat ihre Lektüre gewechselt (CD)

Gerhard Rühm - Diotima hat ihre Lektüre gewechselt (CD)
A 1971 detective audio play based on a real murder trial from the early 20th century. The court records are read out by two girls, accompanied by narrative background sounds and a piano piece. Liner-notes (in English and German) by Gerhard Rühm.
“The 1971 detective audio play Diotima hat ihre Lektüre gewechselt goes back to the records of a murder trial that took place around the turn of the 20th century: two music students were killed upon their own request—because of a love affair—by their piano teacher, who afterwards lacked the courage to shoot himself too, as planned. the court records are read out by two girls in alternation. the text is accompanied by background noise that the listeners can understand in relation to the described events but which liberates itself from the narration and suggests its own dimension of events. […] Piano sounds are a further, structuring, element. they frame and subdivide the whole into sections of equal size, in a purely mechanical way. […] The role of the piano part, however, is not just one of structuring time, or also of disrupting (as the speech is sometimes interrupted by tones in the middle of a phrase or a word); in fact it relates to the described court case in terms of content as well, evoking associations to the piano lessons the young man gave to the two girls. the etude-like character and the frustrating discipline of the audio track provides a troubling contrast to the simultaneously expressed emotions.”
Gerhard Rühm (born 1930 in Vienna, lives in Cologne and Vienna) is an Austrian writer, visual artist, composer, performer of experimental / phonetic poetry, radio and theatre author and publisher. He is considered one of the most important artists of experimental poetry. He studied piano and composition at the National Academy of Music and Interpretative Arts in Vienna and later received private tuition from Josef Matthias Hauer.
Gerhard Rühm was a founding member of the “Wiener Gruppe” (1954-1960) with Friedrich Achleitner, H.C. Artmann, Konrad Bayer, and Oswald Wiener. Given the radicalism of their writing, works of art, and happenings, the group is considered to be the first avantgarde movement in Austria, thus contributing decisively to the origin of the Vienna Actionism.
Rühm belongs to the classics of modern German-language literature. Scores of new genres, such as “visual music”, “auditory poetry” and “gestural drawing”, are among his wide-ranging, heterogenous work that emerges from the interface of literature, visual art and music. His work, which bears the influence of Expressionism and Dadaism, is often based on ready-made material taken from everyday life, which he then adapts using a particular formula. In a spirit of play, and without subjecting himself too rigidly to self-imposed rules, astounding, multi-layered effects of meaning emerge from an extreme concentration of means.

See also: Selten Gehörte Musik (Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch, Dieter Roth, Gerhard Rühm, Oswald Wiener).
Text by Gerhard Rühm.
 
published in October 2018
6-panel CD digipack
1 track (42'31)
 
14.00 10.50
(special offer)
 
in stock


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