A concert of music by Charles Shere co-editor of EAR will be held at 1750 ARCH ST. Berkeley June 9, 1974 8:00 p.m. Parts of the Duchamp Opera and Parts of The Woodwind quintet (house advt.)
if we find an english horn player. . .
Marcel Duchamp's great work La Mari‚e mise a nu par ses c‚libataires meme("The Bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even") is more a system of deliberation or a manner of approaching a work of art than a work of art in itself. It consists of an "unfinished" painting on glass, two meters high, together with all the studies and notes toward the work, which constitute a sort of commentary on it. The work has a great deal in common with Mallarm‚'s final unachieved work Le Livre ("The Book"), but it also resembles the music of Gustav Mahler in its continual rehandling of recurring ideas, the music of Edgar Varese (Duchamp's friend) in its complete abstention from traditionally affecting procedures, and the work of Gertrude Stein in the integrity of its inner logic which seems nobly uninterested in references to the familiar world.
The Duchamp Opera, in progress since 1964, will ultimately set nearly all the Bride -related writings of Duchamp, now published in their entirety in an edition by Arturo Schwartz. The music on this concert represents mobile elements of the smaller-scaled instrumental portions of the opera.
Classify Combs and Ground Glass were originally for voice and viola and voice and piano, respectively, and set parts of the opera. The texts have to do with the Duchamp readymade, the notion of a familiar object arbitrarily elevated to the status of work of art -- or not -- by the arbitrary choice of the artist; and with the nature of the medium on which that artist was planning to paint his work.
"Classify combs by the number of their teeth" "Ground glass and rust of different metals as colors to use in 'the spla- sher'."
PARTS OF THE DUCHAMP OPERA
Ces Desirs du Quatour (1965, 1967) flute, clarinet, oboe or english horn, bassoon
Classify Combs (1973) (2d version, without voice, 1974) violin and viola
Ground Glass (1973) (2d version, without voice, 1974) flute, violin, cello, piano
Tender of Gravity (1971, 1972, 1974) flute-piccolo, oboe-english horn, clarinet-bass clarinet, bassoon, harmonium, violin, viola, cello, contrabass
Screen: Quartet no. 3 for four to six strings (1969) violin, viola, cello, contrabass
En Balancant: Quartet no. 9 for 2 or 3 pairs of strings (1971) two violins, cello, contrabass
Vie Lactee: Quartet no. 10 for four to six strings, muted (1971) violin, viola, cello, contrabass
(Quartet no. 7) Like a Piece of Silvered Glass (1970) flute-piccolo, english horn, clarinet, bassoon
Screen (reprise)
Tender of Gravity (reprise)
p. 8 Typed by Barb 10/94