FROTTAGE

I find myself often trying to form ideas from areas outside music. One of these deals with translation, with the a web of associations we know from speech and the flow of speech. These remind me in a way of Max Ernst’s frottage technique, which he developed in 1925. Ernst was mainly concerned with how to shut down comprehension and knowledge of structure while painting. The idea was to submit wholly to his own, free-flowing imagination. What were his tools? For example wood grain, from a raw relief surface, such as a wooden post or dried veneer. These were carried over to paper or a canvas using pencil rubbings. The drawings which emerge from these rubbings convey a kind of automatic script, a mode of writing. They influence the further path of the imagination in the painting process...

What we mean by all this is guided flexibility. That begins with the choice of material (in my musical sense, harmonic-rhythmic material specific to the piece). This material is the starting point for reactions, and they are bound up with my personal associations as a musician. The musical results come from my own personal ‘musical folklore’ reacting with that of the audience. When it is performed, the composition is freed from my associations. The effect when that happens cannot be anticipated - so at this moment the piece begins its life as an enigma. I hope.

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Simeon Pironkoff, from: Gedanken zur Formierung des eigenen Sprachflusses
http://simeonpironkoff.gmxhome.de/
Edited and translated by S.F..