The story of the lost Morton Feldman recording, hidden in plain sight with a name tag and everything, reminded me of Kurt Schwitters’ recording of his Ursonate. Back when I was first trying to find out more about Schwitters, every book (yes, pre-internet) I read mentioned that Schwitters never made a complete recording of his major sound poem. Then one day I find a CD in the shops of Schwitters reciting the piece. All of it. How did this happen? It went a little something like this….
Cologne, 1987
Michael Waisvisz: Oh, you can borrow my copy.
Ox: No, I mean a performance by Schwitters himself.
Waisvisz: Yeah, I taped a copy of it from some guy at STEIM back in the 60s. It was a dub of some shellac discs Schwitters had recorded.
Ox: !!!!!
Waisvisz: What, is it rare or something?
UbuWeb has a page of different versions of the Ursonate, including the Schwitters recording, and the 1986 recording by Jaap Blonk that Ernst Schwitters doesn’t want you to hear!
Also, just because I found them while (ahem) researching this post, here are some ridiculously cool photos of Leon Theremin jamming with Michael Waisvisz.
