BURROUGHS' BELLOWS

by Volker Heyn [2000]

 

commissioned by the city of Bühl/Baden (Germany)

 

written for IzP

 

duration: 10'00

 

[first performed: Bühl/Baden (Germany) within the scope of "schroffe kanten", nov 5th 2000]

Before the Karlsruhe (Germany) - based composer Volker Heyn (*1938) studied music and attained a reputation in the world of contemporary music since the late seventies, he earned his livelihood in the sixties as a swing-shift steel worker in Australia. The raw metallic sounds surrounding him there were the trigger for his research of the POETRY IN NOISE, where he also discovered his interest in a highly energized hard attack and its resulting soft decay period.

[translated by Michael Rook]

He wrote about his piece:

 

William S. Burroughs, the poet, screaming, blaring endlessly, singing-bawling, puking himself in a single extended scream from one hell to the next. His book "Naked Lunch" speaks in an only apparently primitive manner of power, hero-worship, aimless violence, materialistic obsessions and every, any kind of hypocrisy. ... but also of human beings depraved by drug-frenzy and hallucinations. A SONG FROM HELL..., violent, threateningly wild and still not without a greyish black undertone of humour and hope. It would be presumptuous to say that all this is the stuff that this music is made of. "Burrough's Bellows" is inspired by the "hard-edge"-poetical power, that speaks from W. S. Burroughs' book.