12/16/06

Dickinson / Beuger in Amsterdam

Should you just happen to be in Amsterdam coming Friday, you might want to visit a very special performance at Perdu, where an extraordinary reading of Emily Dickinson will take place.

Dutch-born German Composer Antoine Beuger is the editor of Edition Wandelweiser, a music publisher-cum-international experimental composers network. The music of the Wandelweiser group has been among the most radical of experimental music over the last decade or so, often featuring very long pieces with very few elements, long notes, long silences.

In Amsterdam, together with Sylvia Alexandra Schimag, Beuger will present one of the pieces in his 20-part Emily Dickinson cycle, "Landscapes of Abscence". Each of these works consists of a reading of one of Dicksinson's poems, syllable by syllable, over the course of 100 minutes, with extremely sparse instrumental accompaniment. Reading is done at what might be the speed of writing, or even slower, to stage the work of Dickinson, not as a form of public speaking, but primarily as a private working enterprise, the concentrated writing of messages to absent partners - and the extreme time-frame puts performer, text and listener on the edge of disappearing themselves into time and poetic work as such. The Amsterdam performance will be of Landscapes of Absence 2 for voice and flute, a setting of Four Trees - upon a solitary Acre -

Text-pieces are among the the important concerns for quite a few composers affiliated with Wandelweiser. Also on the Wandelweiser site, check out some of the experimental writings and text performance scores of Gottfried Wanner (1944-2006)

Perdu: Kloveniersburgwal 86, Amsterdam. Friday, December 22, at 20:30 (doors open at 20:00). Entry 6 euro.

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