Diotima Hat Ihre Lektüre Gewechselt

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Album Info

Release Date: 2018

Label: Tochnit Aleph

"the 1971 detective audio play "Diotima hat ihre Lektüre gewechselt" goes back to the records of a murder trial that took place around the turn of the 20th century: two music students were killed upon their own request – because of a love affair – by their piano teacher, who afterwards lacked the courage to shoot himself too, as planned. the court records are read out by two girls in alternation. the text is accompanied by background noise that the listeners can understand in relation to the described events but which liberates itself from the narration and suggests its own dimension of events. this creates some confusion in the listeners, who constantly remain unsure whether to relate the accompanying noises to the text, or whether to picture something entirely different. at the same time, the imagination is stimulated and the “detective intuition” aroused, so it might be called a detective play in that sense also. in any case – at least by the time when one narrator has “exchanged her reading matter” with the other – this much should be clear: the audio play not only records past events but also documents an internal process, running parallel, between the two narrators – of an obviously erotic nature.
piano sounds are a further, structuring, element. they frame and subdivide the whole into sections of equal size, in a purely mechanical way. these caesuras are always formed by a sequence of three tones of the chromatic scale, from subcontra “a” to four-lined “a” and back, presented in intervals of a minor third; first in one voice, then in two and three voices. the instrument’s range therefore virtually marks the outer frame of the audio play. the role of the piano part, however, is not just one of structuring time, or also of disrupting (as the speech is sometimes interrupted by tones in the middle of a phrase or a word); in fact it relates to the described court case in terms of content as well, evoking associations to the piano lessons the young man gave to the two girls. the etude-like character and the frustrating discipline of the audio track provides a troubling contrast to the simultaneously expressed emotions.“
(from the liner notes by Gerhard Rühm)

Edition of 300 copies in six-panel digipak.