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CD
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CVSD 118CD
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Corbett vs. Dempsey presents Jaap Blonk's Ursonate, featuring the complete text-sound work by artist Kurt Schwitters. Blonk first recorded the canonical Dada poetry piece in 1986, released as an LP on BVHAAST, Willem Breuker's label. He has returned to the work multiple times over the ensuing decades, and this incredible new recording shows his deepening understanding of the pioneering work. Blonk writes in the liner notes: "Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) wrote his Ursonate or Sonate in Urlauten ('Primordial Sonata' or 'Sonata in Primordial Sounds') over ten years, from 1922 to 1932. During that period Schwitters tried out many preliminary parts in public poetry readings. It became a 30-page work in invented words, which he later considered one of his two masterpieces (the other being the Merzbau in his house in Hannover, destroyed in 1944). The Ursonate has a structure similar to that of a classical sonata or symphony. It consists of four movements: 'Erster Teil' ('first part'), 'Largo,' 'Scherzo,' and 'Presto.' After a short introduction, the first movement opens with an exposition of its four main themes (subjects), each of which is subsequently 'developed' (development in the sense it is used in classical sonata form), leading to a coda. It is note- worthy that the theme exposition returns as a reprise before each new development but the last one. Both the Largo and the Scherzo have a centered (A-B-A) construction in which the middle part contrasts with the two identical outer parts. The Presto has a strict rhythm broken only by a few interjections from the first movement and the Scherzo. Like the first movement, it follows the sonata form: exposition (repeated immediately in this case), development, and recapitulation. Next is the Kadenz, leaving the reciter free to choose between the written version and his own. However, in his written instructions for future performers of the piece, Schwitters says that he wrote his cadenza only for those among them who 'had no imagination.' In my performances of the Ursonate, I always create an improvised cadenza on the basis of the sonata's thematic material. Only on the recordings I have issued, for reasons of completeness, a recording of the written cadenza is included as a separate track." --Jaap Blonk, December 2024
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