Michael von Biel, born in Hamburg in 1937, took up music studies in 1956 in Toronto, Vienna and New York, where he was taught by Morton Feldman and came into contact with John Cage, stayed in London, where he met Cornelius Cardew, and attended the Darmstadt Summer Courses from 1961 to 1963. He belonged to the Fluxus movement, played in Mary Bauermeister’s studio, realised “Fassung” in the electronic studio in 1964 on a commission from the WDR and studied with Joseph Beuys at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1968/69. In 1970 he had his first solo exhibition, sought contact with musicians of the group CAN and recorded his cello music at the Feedback Studio; in 1977 he took part in documenta VI. The works on the CD were selected by Johannes Fritsch and the Feedback Studio Verlag, which publishes von Biel’s compositions.
The interview in the booklet took place on 28 February 1971 at the Feedback Studio while everyone was waiting for the cello to arrive. Von Biel talks about lost pieces and the confusing numbering of his quartets, about some two hundred drawings, thirty of which he says he has published, and about the path from the street plans and maps he drew as a child to landscape. “Deutsche Landschaften”, he says, is not programme music but “concept art perhaps”, an aesthetic idea such as might lie behind the drawing of a landscape on Lake Constance: music is a mental concept, drawing an executed one. There is no such thing as progress in music; for him personally, getting away from music would be progress.
“Deutsche Landschaften” (1970) was recorded in the summer of 1970 by Rolf Dammers. The first recording of the “Cello Concerto” (1971) on 28 February was unsuccessful; the valid one was made in the night of 4 to 5 March 1971, recorded by Johannes Fritsch. Von Biel ruled out that a piece could sound the same in two performances: if he played a piece from 7 February again, he would change various things, because it was no longer the present of that day. He allowed himself to be strongly influenced by the moment of performance and never made so many rules for himself that he could not profit from things coming from outside.
The recordings were made at the Feedback Studio in Cologne, the independent private electronic studio founded in 1970 by Johannes Fritsch, Rolf Gehlhaar and David Johnson. The CD runs to 78:47; the booklet has 16 pages in German and English, and the production was supported by the Kunststiftung NRW. Von Biel’s compositions are still published by the Feedback Studio Verlag, which also had a hand in the choice of works for this volume.