For DEGEM’s sixth CD, Johannes Fritsch selected works from the circle of the Feedback Studio Köln, which he had founded in 1970/71 with Rolf Gehlhaar and David Johnson; the notes on the works in the booklet come from the Feedback Studio Verlag. Michael von Biel, who studied with Morton Feldman and Karlheinz Stockhausen among others and, after studying with Joseph Beuys, has worked mainly as a visual artist, wrote “Book for three” (1961) for three pianos and dedicated it to David Tudor; it was premiered in Darmstadt in 1962 by von Biel, Harald Bojé and Egon Mayer. The score gives precise instructions on the implements with which the pianos are to be made to sound, such as cymbals, gongs or the metal bases of American microphone stands. Von Biel recorded the piece himself in 1963 at Radio Copenhagen, using the playback method.
Rolf Gehlhaar’s “Cymbal Piece” (1969), premiered by Christoph Caskel in Darmstadt in 1970, amplifies the sound of six cymbals with three microphones via a small Uher mixer and moves it through the space; placed only ten millimetres from the cymbals, the microphones open up a world of sound that is otherwise inaudible. The score consists of several graphically notated structures, which the performer arranges into a version according to a set of rules. The piece was recorded on 28 February 1971 at the Feedback Studio, with Gehlhaar on cymbals and Fritsch at the controls. In Siegfried Koepf’s “Bassmaschine” (1994) a Fender Jazz Bass and a tape recorder form a mechanical system: the machine draws a thread past the strings and bows them continuously. The lowest string is tuned to an audible resonance frequency of the room, and coupling the amplified machine to the room creates a finely balanced feedback loop. At the premiere at a Cologne exhibition in 1994, released here for the first time, two almost identically tuned bass machines ran simultaneously.
Johannes Fritsch wrote “Nachthelle” (1996) for the Ensemble Natrium with Tim Jones (violin, viola), Georg Börgers (cello), Martin Ingenhütt (double bass) and Thomas Lehn (synthesiser); the recording was made in 1997 at the Alte Feuerwache in Cologne. The outer strings of viola, cello and double bass are tuned down by well over an octave, so that, without tension, they produce only noises of indistinct pitch; amplified by microphones, the string sounds are modulated by the actions of the analogue synthesiser. For its notation Fritsch used extracts from a map sketch by Leonardo da Vinci, and the title and some melodic fragments refer to Schubert and Schumann. In Harald Muenz’s “Writing” (1998), Armin Sommer and Ulrich Ludat of duo:archaeopteryx, to whom the piece is dedicated, play a flat-lying bass drum prepared with contact microphones with four hands; the amplified signal is mixed with the recording of the previous performance, delayed by 20 seconds. The piece thus keeps writing its own performance history; the CD presents an excerpt from the seventh performance at the Schreyahner Herbst in 2001.
At the end comes an excerpt from Harald Muenz’s Writing for two players at one large drum, recorded on 29 September 2001 at the Schreyahner Herbst. The CD is at once the third volume of the Feedback Studio Köln series and the sixth of the DEGEM; it runs to 77:28, and the booklet has 20 pages in German and English.