Beyond "Rakt: Tsatzrakt"...

Josef Anton Riedl - Polygonum / Nr. 3 / Paper Music / Nr. 4/1 / Studien für Elektronische Klänge II, I, IV / Vielleicht-Duo

(1970-2, Wergo WER 60066 LP, out of print)





Excerpted from the GEMA News bio:

Josef Anton Riedl has never served the "normal" genres. He did not write a single sonata, string quartet, concert, symphony or even an opera. But Riedl's works of the past 50 years cannot simply be categorised as pieces for percussion, sound poems and musique concrète/electronic music.



It is not his style to work "according to chapters, frameworks or lists" but to transcend limits.

In his search for new sounds Riedl has consistently left the limitations of standard instruments further and further behind - one may also say that he continuously deferred using them by establishing new sources of sounds as instruments. The whole human body, for example, becomes an instrument in Riedl's work when the voice of the speaker in his sound poems is accompanied by percussive sounds like walking, running, stamping or clapping. And if he wishes to centre his compositions on the sound of a certain material, as he does in Paper Music (1961/ 68/70/80), Metallophonic Raum - Klangwerkstatt (Metallophonic Space - Sound Workshop) (1974/76) or Glas-Spiele (Glass Games) (1975/77), and satisfactory instruments for these sounds do not yet exist, Riedl simply develops completely new instruments of his own without further ado.

Finally and inevitably, however, even Riedl came up against the limits of the acoustic medium itself. He had already gathered some cross-media experience with his compositions for theatre and film: for example, with the incidental music for Harold Pinter's own production of The Caretaker (1961) or Fritz Kortner's production of Georg Büchner's Leonce and Lena (1963) at the Münchner Kammerspiele or the film music for Otto Martini's documentary Impuls der Zeit (Impulse of Time) (1959) and Edgar Reitz's experimental films Kommunikation (1961) and Geschwindigkeit (Speed) (1963). In 1967 Riedl founded his own multimedia ensemble, the Musik/Film/Dia/Licht-Galerie (Music/ Film/Slide/Light Gallery), and began to stage his own multimedia events like Die Spielstraße (The Street of Games) (for the 1972 Olympics in Munich), the Klangleuchtlabyrinth (Sound-Light Labyrinth) (for Donaueschingen in 1976) or the Klang/Licht/Duft-Spiele (Sound/Light/Scent Plays) (1973).

Riedl's works seem to have difficulty in assuming a final form. There are scarcely any of his compositions that are not augmented at a later point in time in one way or another or that do not suddenly turn up in another context...

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Amen to that!



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101 Siete A

01 Polygonum (1968)

soloisten: Simone Rist und Nicolaus A. Huber

02 Nr. 3 (1966-67)

03 Paper Music (1968/70)

soloisten: Mike Lewis und Michael W. Ranta

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201 Siete B

04 Nr. 4/1 (1968-69)

05 Studien für Elektronische Klänge II, I, IV (1959-62)

06 Vielleicht-Duo (1963/70)

soloist: Johannes Göhl

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01 recorded Bayerischer Rundfunk, Nürnberg, 23 June 72.
02, 04-05 recorded Siemens-Studio für Elektronische Musik, München, 1970.
03 recorded Wegideutscher Rundfunk, Godorf, 27 April 70.
06 recorded Hescicher Rundfunk, 1970.

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(101 MB, ripped at 320 kbps from the original Wergo vinyl, and archived to zip.)

Get it here.

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Herr Riedl's works have had a massive influence on yours truly.

Don't miss this seminal compilation...

TS

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