Ben Johnston (*1926): Visions and Spels (1976). Part I (10.00) Part II (17.00) The New Verbal Workshop. The New Verbal Workshop, founded in 1970 by Herbert and Norma Marder, is a group of six poets, musicians and actors who perform a medium which they call "speechmusic," using the voice as primary instrument. All Workshop compositions are improvised: formal structures and themes are developed through exercises and rehearsals and, as in jazz, the content is different in each performance, "teetering" as reviewer Thomas Willis says, "on the boundary between music and poetry." (The Chicago Tribune, April 17,1977). New Verbal Workshop has given performances at the Depot Theater and at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana, Illinois, and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Its activities have been supported by grants from the University of Illinois. Participating in Visions and Spels are Herbert Marder, Norma Marder, Joan Korb, Fred Simon, Theo Ann Brown and Ben Johnston. Visions and Spels is a realization of the indeterminate composition Vigil (although the score, a verbal text, was not written down until after the piece was completed). It was composed by the New Verbal Workshop, of which I was, for this composition, a member. I led the improvisations and decided upon the texts to be used. The impetus for composing this work came from an invitation from Patricia Knowles of the University of Illinois Dance Department to compose a piece for the United States' Bicentennial Year. The first version was performed in 1976, with dancers. After this performance, the Workshop decided to make an independent composition of it. The work is truly a group composition. In part, the impetus to participate in such a composition came from a negative reaction to descriptions of group compositions in mainland China, reported by Cornelius Cardew. Their approach seemed to me be so wrongly based that I vowed to undertake the problem myself in order to make it work as I thought that it could-and should. All the texts are by North American aborigines and come from the collection Technicians of the Sacred, edited by Jerome Rothenberg." (Ben Johnston) *** The music published in our channel is exclusively dedicated to divulgation purposes and not commercial. This within a program shared to study classic educational music of the 1900's (mostly Italian) which involves thousands of people around the world. If someone, for any reason, would deem that a video appearing in this channel violates the copyright, please inform us immediately before you submit a claim to Youtube, and it will be our care to remove immediately the video accordingly. Your collaboration will be appreciated.

• published: 09 Feb 2012
• views: 1756
• author: john volpe