After working with Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Expo in Osaka, David Johnson, Rolf Gehlhaar and Johannes Fritsch founded the Feedback Studio in Cologne in 1970 as an independent, private electronic studio; shortly afterwards Fritsch and Gehlhaar set up the Feedback Studio Verlag, the first composer-owned publishing house in Germany. With the money earned in Osaka, the young composers bought the studio’s basic equipment and a VCS 3 synthesiser from Electronic Music Studios London, which combined the sound generation and sound processing of an electronic studio in a single device; it provides the ring modulation in “Violectra”. The premiere on 21 May 1971 was made possible by Christof Bitter, then head of the new music department of the Saarländischer Rundfunk, at his festival “Musik im 20. Jahrhundert”, in a guest concert of the Feedback Studio with works by Rolf Gehlhaar and Michael von Biel.
Fritsch, born in Bensheim-Auerbach in 1941, had studied viola in Cologne, among other subjects, and composition with Bernd Alois Zimmermann, and was a member of the Stockhausen Ensemble from 1964 to 1970; in 1984 he became professor of composition at the Cologne Musikhochschule. The programme of the premiere describes “Violectra” as his third work, after the “Duett für Bratsche” (1962) and the “Partita” for viola, contact microphones, tape recorders, filters and faders (1966), in which controlled improvisation on the viola is confronted with a complicated technical mediation system. The viola in this case is a six-string viola d’amore with six sympathetic strings from the early 19th century, which Fritsch had discovered at a violin maker’s in Cologne.
Only the first version, produced in 1971 at the Feedback Studio with David Johnson on synthesiser, was edited together from several takes; all the others are concert recordings. The first CD continues with a Hinterhausmusik concert of the Feedback Studio from 1980, a concert in Phil Niblock’s New York loft (Experimental Intermedia) from 1993 and a Feedback Studio event in Stockholm from 1999; the second holds versions from the Stuttgart Musikhochschule in 1981, a Cologne Hinterhausmusik in 1982 and a concert in Osaka in 1987. In most versions the soloist sits between two microphones: one transmits the natural sound of the viola d’amore, the other feeds it into the synthesiser, where it is ring-modulated with a sine wave on one of the instrument’s middle fundamental tones; in some versions a time delay via tape recorders is added.
Common to all versions is the tonality that arises from the instrument’s tuning on fundamental tones (c-g-c’-c’-g’-c’’) and the ring modulation with the fundamental, as are the periodic rhythm and a cyclical rather than directed form. Pizzicato, harmonics, ponticello and col legno shape the sound colours, and some longer versions last as long as the strength of the right hand allows. In the versions with delay, such as Cologne 1982 and Osaka 1987 with a delay of about four seconds via two tape recorders, minimalist layering effects arise. Whether the recordings make “Violectra” appear as one piece or each version stands in its own right is deliberately left open by the Feedback Studio Verlag’s booklet text.