Duchamp: "Erratum Musical"

Marcel Duchamp: "Erratum Musical" (1913) performed by Stephane Ginsburgh on a Bösendorfer 200. Recorded at rue de Bordeaux 17, Brussels on the 8th of February 2001

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Duchamp
• random
• chance
• operation
• aleatoric
• john
• cage
• dada

[NGS712]

From what I read, this is only part of a longer work, isn't it?

[NewMusicXX]

There are recordings of longer performances. The performance time depends on the duration of each note, for which Duchamp gave no instructions. On this particular recording, the performer drew 88 pitches and performed them at seven times throughout the day and allowed his mood at the moment to determine the durations and articulations of each note.

[NGS712]

Yes I did read that in your notes, though I also noticed on the CD this is from that there are several other pieces as well.

So would that mean those are all those 'variations' [for lack of a better word] on the same work?

[NewMusicXX]

Yes, that's exactly right. In fact, on the cover of this particular CD it says "7 variations on a draw of 88 notes". The seven performances are quite different from one another. In addition, there are other recordings of Musical Erratum played by various combinations of instruments. The recording by the SEM Ensemble is nice.

[ew7810]

salvadordalipictures.blogspot.­com

[RTCMAHL]

I think there was 'chance music' in Mozart and Haydn's day actually, they would do stuff with dice . . although I'm not 100% sure what it was or how it sounded.

[NGS712]

I was thinking that was it. Got confused by the different titles for each performance.

[lorenzarthur91]

chance composition almost 40 years before cage did it? amazing.

[allertonoff2]

big thanks for this post =]

[NGS712]

Thank you for posting this, I never knew that he wrote music as well.