Wajid Yaseen - On piano destruction (2007)
Intro:
What is it about the nature of the piano that so many artists choose it predominantly over other musical instruments when it comes to destroying them in the name of art? Annea Lockwood, Nam June Paik, Raphael Ortiz, Karl-Erik Welin, Francois-Rene Duchable, Joseph Beuys, to name but a few have all proceeded to burn, drown, suspend, hammer or degrade pianos to an irrevocable point where they can no longer be played. What has the piano become to symbolise that warrants such searing acts towards it? In this essay, I aim to explore some of the differing reasons behind piano destruction, some of the key names and figures involved and to investigate opinions from contemporary artists whose working practises include piano destruction pieces comparing them to camps that state no piano should be destroyed under any circumstance. Research has been gathered from personal experience, discussions with classical pianists and performance artists bound by their choice of using the piano as the primary symbol of their destructive expression.
1 - Iconography of the Piano: Symbolism of the Piano and its Stature
The piano was one of the major status symbols amongst the growing middle
classes in the 19th century throughout Europe where it served a prominent
role in homes. Its success as the most popular instrument in these homes
was due to a number of reasons, one of them being its versatility. It could
be played solo or duet, as an accompaniment to the voice or other instruments
and became a fashionable object within a short space of time. Another reason
for its popularity according to Arthur Loesser in his extensive writing
on the social history of the piano in his book titled Men, Women and Pianos
(1954) was due to the role of women within middle class aspirational society.
To quote from the chapter titled ‘The Claviers are Feminine’,
Loesser states:
Who played these middle-class keyboards? Women mostly […]
They were the ones who had the most time and the most opportunity. The instrument
was a house furnishing […] Their leisure also allowed the most imaginative
among them plenty of encouragement for the tender introspection for the
emotional auto-intoxication of which home singing and clavier playing were
convenient expressions’
[Loesser 1990:64]
An expected knowledge of reading, writing and religion, now included music,
drawing and dancing. As material and cultural ambitions grew, the piano
came to embody the positive ideals of personal productivity, family solidarity,
feminine domesticity and moral progress. Its popularity grew and unsurprisingly
so did the backlash to this new musical democracy. As the historian Jacques
Barzun put it in the preface of Loesser’s book ‘the piano has
become an institution even more characteristic than the bath-tub’.
Walter Benjamin referred to the piano as ‘a piece of furniture that
functions in the petit-bourgeois interior as the true dynamic of all the
dominant miseries and catastrophes of the household’ [Benjamin 1986:28]
At the turn of the 20th century, the piano faced threats from other sources
of entertainment such as the movies and the phonograph by which time its
domestic role had altered. Many owners could now not play them and as a
result, a mechanical device called a Piano-Player was invented which sat
in front of normal pianos and played them by means of a series of felt-covered
fingers. Within a few years, the mechanism of these ‘push-ups’,
as they became known, was directly built in to normal pianos. These modified
pianos were generically known as Player-Pianos [Grew: 1925] although shrewd
marketing tactics by one particular manufacturer, the Aeolian Company, gave
them the title of the Pianola by which they came to be known by the general
public. Player-Pianos were foot-operated and controlled by means of suction
power with a perforated music roll controlling the pitch. There were no
changes of tempo or phrasing and only volume could be controlled by a small
lever hence the development of Reproducing Pianos a few years later which
were able to reproduce pedalling and dynamics. In effect, complete pieces
of music could be reproduced and as a result nearly every major pianist
of the early 20th century made rolls for these pianos.
Each of these aspects of cultural transformation represented, over time,
both a threat and a stimulus to the regular piano-making industry [1].
Due to these cultural and economical shifts in society, the piano’s
stature as an eminent symbol of aspiration had shifted.
2 - Extending the Instrument: the Distinction Between Piano Modification and Destruction
There is a distinction to be made between piano modifications, as developed
by John Cage (1912-1992) with his well-known prepared pianos and outright
piano destruction. Work on prepared or extended pianos was and is concerned
with exploring the piano’s functionality and to broaden its sonic
potential using unorthodox methods. Although Cage popularised the prepared
piano and inspired many composers to modify the instrument, it’s forerunner,
the harpsichord, was altered with reed stops; these lowered strips of paper
onto the strings as early as the 17th century. By the mid 18th century,
muting mechanisms and stop registers had become standard devices on pianos.
Around the turn of the 19th century, pianos were altered to include a pedal
that would cause a bell to ring or a hammer to strike the soundboard in
imitation of a bass drum, sometimes known as a “Turkish stop”
(also known as the “military” or “Janissary” stop).
Erik Satie’s performance of Piege de Meduse in 1913 included placing
sheets of paper on the piano strings to imitate the sound of the puppets
that featured in the play. Satie, who was dismissed as a “negligible
eccentric” [Tommasini 1997:81] was to have an influence on Cage, who
was probably introduced to Satie’s music by the composer Virgil Thomson.
We can see signs of Cage’s interest with his arrangement of Satie’s
Socrate for Merce Cunningham’s ballet Idyllic Song in 1945 followed
by Cage’s performance of Piege de Meduse in 1948 where he organised
a concert festival of Satie’s music [Revill 1992:94].
In the 1920’s an instrument called the Luthéal [2]
was invented where objects were lowered just above certain strings to produce
dulcimer-like sounds although the instrument itself became obsolete within
a few years due to the fragile nature of the mechanics. Another example
of performances that included piano modifications was a piece by the French
composer Maurice Delage (1879–1961) titled Ragamalika (1912-22) that
incorporated a section of cardboard placed on strings to emulate the sound
of an Indian drum. Henry Cowell’s ‘Aeolian Harp’ written
in 1923, which he dubbed ‘string piano’ instructed the pianist
to reach inside the instrument and manipulate the strings directly with
the hands. This ‘interior work’ incorporated techniques such
as plucking the strings with fingernails, scraping objects along strings,
strumming or brushing the strings and incorporated utilising the body of
the instrument itself. Piano modifications were intended to expand the possibility
and the tonal range of the instrument and Cage claimed it was possible to
“place in the hands of a single pianist the equivalent of an entire
percussion orchestra ... With just one musician, you can really do an unlimited
number of things on the inside of the piano if you have at your disposal
an 'exploded' keyboard.” [Cage & Charles 1981:38]. [3]
The intention of modifying a piano, although still viewed as a method of
brutalisation by some traditionalists, is markedly different from the intention
of destroying a piano completely and it will be helpful to mark the point
of differing intent. Before we can explore reasons for destroying the instrument
outright, it is important to mention the intermediary standpoint of “ruined
pianos”. W.A.R.P.S (World Association for Ruined Piano Studies) [4]
is a group formed in 1991 by Ross Bolleter and Stephen Scott (professor
of music at Colorado University, Australia) and according to them, has been
created with the intention of “giving old pianos a good home, which
can certainly mean adequate sunshine and rain”[5].
Their interest lies in pianos that have been abandoned to face natural weather
conditions with their gradual deterioration resulting in few of the notes
resembling a conventional piano. The piano’s frame and bodywork is
for the most part kept intact but the soundboard is prised open subjecting
it to “the blue sky” so that it can be played in the ordinary
way. In answer to my questions made directly to Bolleter regarding reasons
for ruined piano research, he replied:
Amazing sonorities, expressive power, permeability to the
sound environments in which the ruined pianos find themselves – indeed
intimacy with birdsong, wind, trucks starting up, sheep station owners complaining
about the drought – constitute good reasons for me improvising on
ruined pianos, and recording them. [6]
There is also an underlying political dimension to their work, to quote
Bolleter again:
The piano, that arch symbol of European musical culture
(and cultural imperialism) in its present location and condition as the
Ruined Piano functions is a dead end sign for the Northern Hemisphere traditions
and styles that we have so gratefully and eagerly adopted in Australia […]
all this is reduced to a debris of rotten wood and rusted wire. Re-entering
the soil it is absorbed into the voices of the crickets and birds. [7]
There seems to be a sensitivity to their work similar to that of Annea Lockwood
(b.1939) who also incorporated an ‘acoustic ecological’ approach
integrating gradual deterioration as part of her work. Her Piano Transplant
performances (1969-1972), in homage to Christian Barnard’s pioneering
heart transplants, incorporated old, defunct pianos that were variously
burned, drowned and partially buried. At a conference titled ‘Historicism?
Sound, Music and Ruined Pianos’ in Australia in 2005, Lockwood stated:
“It was not destruction which fascinated me. I am interested in something
less predictable, arising from the gradual action of natural forces [...]
on an instrument designed for maximum control.” [8]
One could propose a ruined piano is a piano ‘prepared by nature’
and parallels to the Vanitas art movements in Holland of the 16th and 17th
century can be made here where notions of decay were integral to the work.
Symbols such as smoke, watches, hourglasses and rotting fruit represented
the brevity of death and musical instruments symbolised the ephemeral nature
of life. [9]
3 – the Poetry of Destruction: Curiosity and Emotional Resonance
There are wide and varied methods of piano destruction and equally wide
and varied reasons for doing so and these piano destruction pieces are by
no means restricted solely to those in the field of music or sound. Fine
artists have made extensive use of the piano as part of their work including
Raphael Ortiz, Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys, all with varying intent and
purpose. In the 1950’s Raphael Ortiz (b.1934) emerged as one of the
key figures in the ‘Destructivist’ movement which attempted
to redress the social detachment of post-war avant-garde performance art
happenings working in a number of genres including painting, sculpture and
installations. He started performing theatrical rituals where he destroyed
furniture, musical instruments and various other objects with the concept
that through the symbolic destruction of objects, one could shift destruction
from society to art – one could transform the object, the artist and
society as a whole. At the core of his thinking was the idea that destruction
itself did not become art but that it transformed into a process that released
both the man-made object and the human subject from the constraints of societal
norms. Ortiz frequently incorporated pianos as part of his performances
and is rumoured to have destroyed around 80 in performances throughout Europe
and the US. The psychologist and psychotherapist Dr Arthur Janov, the creator
of a method of therapy called Primal Therapy, was inspired by Ortiz’s
performances at DIAS and dedicated his first book titled Primal Scream [1970,
Putnam, NY] to him. [10]
In 1988 Ortiz was honored with a retrospective exhibition at the El Museo
del Barrio museum in New York, titled “Years of the Warrior, Years
of the Psyche, 1960-1988”. During the exhibition, he performed a dual
piano destruction piece titled Homage: Duet to Huelsenbeck in reference
to Richard Huelsenbeck, one of the main protagonists of the Dadaist movement
in Berlin. The performance called for active audience participation in the
destruction of the second piano and the homage performance underscored the
mutual admiration that Huelsenbeck and Ortiz had for one another’s
work.
Acknowledging a debt to both Ortiz and Huelsenbeck, contemporary artists
Gary Nickard and Reinhard Reitzenstein recently performed a destructivist
performance piece in April 2007 titled Monsters in New York, billed as “a
duet of ritualized violence and stifled catharsis emerging from the dying
shrieks of two sacrificial pianos, set against a starkly jagged swirl of
throbbing guitar feedback and pulsing percussion" [11]
Ortiz’s various activities and manifesto’s coalesced in the
‘Destruction in Art Symposium’ in London in 1966. The group,
led by Gustav Metzger (b.1926), included a diverse group of artists, poets
and scientists such as Hermann Nitsch, Wolf Vostell, Yoko Ono, Gunter Brus,
John Latham, Al Hanson, and Barbara Steveni and explored elements of destruction
in Happenings. Metzger was the leading component of the Auto-Destructive
Art movement and his first manifesto written in 1959 stated:
[] Auto-destructive art is primarily a form of public art for industrial
societies.
[] Self-destructive painting, sculpture and construction is a total unity
of idea, site, form, colour, method, and timing of the disintegrative process.
[] Auto-destructive art can be created with natural forces, traditional
art techniques and technological techniques.
[] The amplified sound of the auto-destructive process can be an element
of the total conception.
[] The artist may collaborate with scientists, engineers.
[] Self-destructive art can be machine produced and factory assembled.
[] Auto-destructive paintings, sculptures and constructions have a lifetime
varying from a few moments to twenty years. When the disintegrative process
is complete the work is to be removed from the site and scrapped. [12]
Ardengo Soffici (1879-1964), one of the principle theoreticians of the Italian
Futurist movement, suggested the arts were breaking with conventional forms
in order to draw closer to the fluidity of life and proclaimed “Art's
final masterpiece will be its own destruction” [13 ].
It can be suggested that the auto-destructive art of Gustav Metzger was
one step closer to realising this concept. The Surrealist dictum about “all
beauty being convulsive” is a heritage from the Futurists’ conviction
that art can be born out of violence and destruction [14].
Kristine Stiles, Professor of Art History at Duke University, US, described
the destruction art movement as follows:
Destruction art bears witness to the tenuous conditionality of survival;
it is the visual discourse of the survivor. It is the only attempt in the
visual arts to grapple seriously with the technology and psychodynamics
of actual and virtual extinction, one of the few cultural practices to redress
the general absence of discussion about destruction in society. [15]
In exploring pieces that specifically included pianos, we can refer to a
number of fine-artists as well as musicians and composers. Nam June Paik
(1932-2006), known for his work with video installations also incorporated
a piano is his piece Klavier Integral (1958-1963) where an upright piano
was prepared with various everyday objects [16] and altered
to the point where it’s sounds were distorted beyond any point of
recognition of belonging. His involvement with Fluxus, the group loosely
organised by George Maciunas, brought him into contact with experimental
composers and musicians such as John Cage, La Monte Young and the cellist
Charlotte Moorman. The charismatic and controversial Joseph Beuys, renowned
for his ritualistic approach to live happenings, also incorporated a piano
in his piece from 1969 titled Revolutionsklavier. During the 1960’s
he formulated concepts concerning the social, cultural and political function
of art. He was motivated by the conviction in the power of universal human
creativity and was confident in the potential for art to bring about revolutionary
changes within society as a whole. His most famous phrase, ‘Everyone
is an artist’ was written in 1973 where he stated:
Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible
for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is
now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling
the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter
along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build ‘a social organism
as a work of art’…every human being is an artist who –
from his state of freedom – the position of freedom that he experiences
at first-hand – learns to determine the other positions of the total
art work of the future social order. [17]
As for musicians involved in piano destruction pieces, Karl-Erik Welin (1934
– 1992) was a Swedish composer, pianist and organist who seemed to
have a love-hate relationship with the piano and appeared to be drawn to
music that allowed for his flair for drama. His chamber piece titled Esservecchia
written in 1963 required a pianist to deliver several strong fist blows
to the piano’s keys and strings. In 1964 whilst performing a piece
by Theodore Liber titled Rendez-vous 1963, he threw himself into destroying
the piano using a chainsaw with such fervour, he injured himself and had
to be taken to hospital. Rumours were abound that he almost cut off his
legs although eye witnesses have described how his inexperience at handling
a chainsaw caused the tool to bounce haphazardly across the keys. He actually
did cut his leg but it was fixed with three stitches. In 1965 he presented
his own piece Essai du Pianiste in which a grand piano was given an elaborate
funeral. The French classical pianist Francois-Rene Duchable (b.1952) notably
quit the music industry after winning France’s soloist of the year
three times in a row in protest at its elitism. In July 2003 he planned
to launch his piano into Lake Mercantour in the French Alps as part of his
first farewell concert. The second farewell concert was to include burning
his recital suit and the third to include blowing up his piano mid-air to
demonstrate “the concert is dead. Long live music”[18].
To quote Duchable : ‘I have had enough of participating in a musical
system, which in France at least, functions badly and limits classical music
to an elite. The piano is a symbol of a certain domineering bourgeois and
industrial society that has to be destroyed. Used as this society uses it,
the piano is an arrogant instrument which excludes all those that don't
know about music,” [19]
4 – Repercussions and the Backlash: Classical Aversion
From evidence gathered
in contact with classical pianists in person and via internet based communities,
it is clear that most classical musicians are repulsed or at least disturbed
by the idea of destroying a piano especially one in a playable condition.
One of they key issues is how the piano ties in with notions of high culture
and how it is still regarded as a symbol of western musical culture. One
could suggest by destroying a piano, one is opposing aesthetic dictates
of elitist European bourgeois music culture with its celebration of some
musics and its deprecation of others. Destroying one therefore instills
a very powerful resonance and has a multitude of meaning not just with musicians
but with the public at large. It is not uncommon for musicians to consider
their instruments as being an extension of their bodies and to view their
instruments ‘prosthetically’. Through constant practice and
playing, the union between player and instrument becomes physical as well
as emotional and the instrument becomes a partner in an intimate act of
expression. Even the piano, as large as it is, is seen or experienced in
this way by musicians and therefore can be see as a body in its own right.
With this in mind, one can imply destroying a piano is akin to a personal
self-mutilation. Would somebody who is classically trained to play the piano
feel more revulsion and distaste in either viewing or being involved in
a piano destruction piece compared with somebody who is not? Personal conversations
with pianists who have destroyed instruments suggest that it seems highly
likely. The level of skill in playing the piano is generally equated to
the amount of time spent trying to master it which in turn can be equated
to the level of physical connectivity with the instrument – the deeper
the bond, the deeper the feelings of self-mutilation. For those pianists
that have been involved with destruction pieces, there are varying levels
of guilt in the knowledge that they have been responsible for the fall of
a body from a grandiose stature to one of complete and irrevocable debasement.
It is the actuality of its death made physical. A common response from pianists
when questioned on the willful destruction of pianos is that it is a wholly
unacceptable act – something sacrilegious. Aside from the loss of
enjoyment in playing or hearing one, there are other reasons to oppose the
idea of destroying one including the issue of economical value; both in
the cost of manufacturing the instrument and the effort involved in making
such an intricate and delicate machine, and to the potential in loss of
income and revenue for the pianist. There is also the issue of waste. In
the current climate of environmental concerns about recycling and wood conservation,
it cannot be considered ideal to visibly waste such materials that make
up a piano – materials that are unlikely to be redeemed from the wreckage
of destroying one. A counter-stance to the idea that the piano represents
an elitist musical culture is that actually destroying a piano could be
considered a reserve of elitism itself.
A point worth exploring is whether electronic instruments, including computers,
generate the same degree of physical connectivity for a player and whether
destroying them in the same vein would generate the same level of aversion.
In personal discussions with classical musicians, it seems the general consensus
is that there would be less distaste in destroying a computer even if it
was designed specifically to make music. Computers are viewed as mass-manufactured,
disposable and ultimately ‘soulless’ machines whereas classical
instruments are seen as individual and unique. Even two instruments of the
same make and model have noticeable differences to the ears of musicians
which may seem trivial to non-instrumentalists. From the perspective of
an electronic musician who does indeed have a comparable relationship with
a computer or any other electronic hardware, one can start to see similar
associations of connectivity or ‘prosthesis’ and research into
human-computer interfaces (HCI) [20] may bring about an
even deeper sense of the union between player and instrument never before
made possible.
5 – Personal Experience : Anthropomorphic Sentimentality and the Moral Low Ground.
The primal desire to
destroy is an unpalatable yet undeniable facet of humanity – something
Sigmund Freud defined as the ‘death instinct’ [21]
. In bringing to mind my own personal experience of destroying a piano,
I recall distinctly different emotional phases. The piano was an upright
and 5 contact mics were placed inside its body with 4 boom mics pointed
towards it. A sledgehammer was used to reduce the instrument to tiny pieces
over a period of two hours – longer than was expected. The initial
sense of ferocity and blind thrill was expected. What was unforeseen though
was the deep sense of sadness and remorse that slowly and unexpectedly crept
up on me. Images of the hands of all those who had played this particular
piano appeared before my eyes and an anthropomorphic sentimentality started
to take form in my mind. The piano started to symbolise human physiology
- the keys became teeth, the cast iron frame became a spine, the casing
a body, and by the end of the exhausting experiment, I literally felt as
though I had blood on my hands - as though I had taken life. In conversations
with other artists who have also chosen to destroy a piano in such a violent
method, I’ve noticed a similar sense of guilt and profound sense of
sadness and even strong regret. During the writing of this essay, I have
recently been witness to a destructivist event where a piano was one of
a number of objects destroyed and used as a cathartic channel to vent fury.
Having previously been involved in destroying pianos first-hand I thought
I would be somehow impervious to the act yet I still found it deeply unsettling
even though my relationship with the piano isn’t profound. As a counter-emotion,
it helps to take a concept from Antonin Artaud’s book ‘Theatre
and its Double’, a collection of essays written as an attack on theatrical
convention written in 1938. The book’s most famous piece is ‘The
Theatre of Cruelty’ where he writes:
“Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle, the
theater is not possible. In our present state of degeneration it is through
the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds” . [22]
Notes
[1] To paraphrase William Hettrick, one of the most
notorious incidents of wholesale destruction of musical instruments was
the burning of a large number of old square pianos at Atlantic City, New
Jersey, on the evening of May 24, 1904. The event was entirely the creation
of Harry Edward Freund, the editor of The Musical Age, a New York trade
journal aimed chiefly at piano dealers and among the many concerns that
Freund raised in his weekly periodical, was the claim that dealers were
suffering losses by having to give trade-in allowances on their old, outmoded
square pianos. His solution to the problem was to stage a public demonstration
of the worthlessness of the squares in a way that would generate maximum
publicity and his campaign began in The Musical Age on November 7, 1903,
with his editorial "Burn the Old Squares at the Atlantic City Convention".
Freund made sure that the bonfire ceremony was described in detail, especially
the point at which he set his torch to the pile of kerosene-soaked pianos,
reported to number one thousand.
[2] Oxford University Press, accessed April 2007, http://www.groveart.com/
[3]
One could suggest Cage could never quite get away from the intrinsic nature
of the piano and its core expression regardless of these modifications With
the advent of modern technology including samplers and software that give
the ability to transpose virtually any sound across a keyboard however,
we have the capacity to
expand on Cage’s description of controlling an entire orchestra and
beyond.
[4] WARPS, Stephen Scott and Ross Bolleter http://www.warpsmusic.com
[5] WARPS, Stephen Scott and Ross Bolleter http://www.warpsmusic.com
[6] from a personal email communication with Ross
Bolleter, April, 2007.
[7] from the website http://www.warpsmusic.com
[8] Sound Scripts: Proceedings of the Inaugural Totally
Huge New Music Festival Conference 2005, vol. 1 (2006) p3
[9] Oxford University Press, accessed May 2007, http://www.groveart.com/
[10] Writings in the book were the inspiration
for the name of the pop bands ‘Tears for Fears’ and ‘Primal
Scream’. An actual therapy session with Janov also inspired John Lennon
and Yoko Ono on their Plastic Ono Band albums.
[11] Gary Nickard and Reinhard Reitzenstein performance
in April 2007, Hallwalls Arts Centre, New York - http://www.hallwalls.org/perflit_04.html
[12]
Metzger manifesto’s - www.luftgangster.de/gmetzger.html
[13] Introduction to Gustav Metzger by Ross Birrell
- http://www.autogena.org/Breathing/Gustav/birrell.html
[14] John Golding - Reviewed Work(s) : The Burlington
Magazine > Vol. 111, No. 795 (Jun., 1969), pp. 386-388
[15] Kristine Stiles - “Selected Comments
on Destruction Art,” - 1992
[16] Nam June Paik – “Klavier Integral”,
1958-1963 – image : http://www.paikstudios.com/gallery/35.html
[17] Beuys statement (1973) published by Caroline
Tisdall: Art into Society, Society into Art (ICA, London, 1974)
[18] Francois-Rene Duchable : http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/french
classical pianist quits in style
[19] Duchable - Times online - www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1147966.ece
[20] Human computer interfacing - http://sigchi.org/cdg/cdg2.html
[21] Sigmund Freud – Beyond the Pleasure
Principle – 1920
[22] Antonin Artaud – “Le Theatre et
son Double” – 1938
Bibliography
Books
Artaud, Antonin 1998 Le Theatre et son Double Grant & Cutler, London
Benjamin, Walter 1986 Moscow Diary Harvard University Press, USA.
Cage, John & Charles, Daniel 1981 For the Birds: In Conversation With
Daniel Charles Marion Boyars Publishers, Boston & London.
Freud, Sigmund 1975 Beyond the Pleasure Principle Norton, New York
Janov, Arthur 1970 Primal Scream, Putnam, New York
Loesser, Arthur 1990 Men Women and Pianos: A Social History Dover Publications,
New York.
Revill, David 1992 The Roaring Silence Bloomsbury, London.
Stiles, Kristine 1992 Selected Comments on Destruction Art V2 Publishing,
Netherlands
Tommasini, Anthony 1997 Virgil Thomson: Composer on the Aisle W.W. Norton
& Co, New York & London.
Articles and Journals
Player-pianos – Sydney Grew – Music & Letters – Vol.
6, No 3 (Jul 1925)
Hettrick, William. Harry Edward Freund’s Great Square – Piano
Bonfire: A Tale Told in the Press. Journal of the American Musical Instrument
Society 30 (2004): 57-97
Webpages
Metzger, Gustav Auto-Destructive Art [first manifesto of auto-destructive
art; 4 November 1959] http://www.luftgangster.de/audeart.html
Personal Communication
Personal email communication with Ross Bolleter, April, 2007
© 2007 Scrapclub