marcel duchamp
ltm catalogue
ISBN: 978-1-906310-02-8

Born near Blainville, France, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) is recognized today as a leading artist and theorist of the 20th Century. To read CD sleevenotes click here. To purchase CD click here.


MUSICAL ERRATUM + IN CONVERSATION (LTMCD 2504) £10
Written in 1913, the Musical Erratum for piano forms part of the sequence of notes and projects which led to Duchamp's celebrated artwork, La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (The bride stripped bare by her batchelors, even, often called The Large Glass). La Mariée… is also the sub-title of the 1913 piano work. Abstract, elusive and even "inachievable" according to the artist, the Musical Erratum consists of two scores. In the first, notes are replaced by numbered keys, and virtuoso performance is discouraged in favour of novel mechanical instrumentation. The second offers a form of random composition, by which numbered balls are dropped into the moving wagons of a toy train. Famously, Duchamp described the whole as "a very useless performance, in any event." Two versions are included on this CD, including a conventional (but non-virtuoso) performance on piano, and another on which spinning rotary discs brush the piano strings to produce extraordinary tones. The extended 74 minute CD also includes four spoken word extracts by Duchamp (in the English language), including a fascinating lecture delivered in Houston in 1957, The Creative Act, and a lengthy interview recorded in 1959. Full tracklist: Musical Erratum (La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même)(prepared piano); The Creative Act; A L'Infinitif; Interview *1; Interview *2; Musical Erratum (La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même)(piano)

Reviews: "This disc is a reminder of how bold 20th century modernism could be. In his coolly lucid discussions on his theory and practice, Duchamp sounds like a kindly inventor of deranged systems and inhuman beings... He took for granted many of the ideas about the depersonalisation and dehumanisation of the creative act later passed off as radical by post-structuralists and postmodernists. His Musical Erratum of 1913 was less a 'composition' than an aleatory-mechanical system, and you might expect that this would make for a dryly academic exercise, devoid of sensual texture. But the two - vastly different - versions here are both compelling. The first, by Mats Persson and Kristine Scholz, is a glistening drone track that resembles a hybrid of Eno and KTL. The second, by Tom Feldschuh, is ominous and inhuman in its refusal of expressiveness and spontaneity. There's something ironic about listening to Duchamp discoursing against art history on a CD beautifully compiled 50 years later. But his theories can still be put to use today, as escape kits we can use to dig out of our (dead) end of History" (The Wire, 01/2008)

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