A form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning.
The Arbitrariness of Language (duration ca 8’00)
Performed by Eva-Maria Zimmermann
Why do we create art and what do we expect it to do? This is the question posed in 68. In the beginning we witness the creative act: a poet, writing and speaking out the earliest fragments of his poems; discovering through experiment his voice, both physically and figuratively.
Patrice Balter performing Edmund Campion's ME in Nice, 2002
la mar amarga (2007) for piano trio
music by Cindy Cox
Graeme Jennings, violin, Leighton Fong, cello, and Christopher Jones, piano
photo from Sensitive Chaos by Theodor Schenk (Rudolph Steiner Press, 1965)
Hysteria (2000) for trombone and electronics.
music by Cindy Cox.
text by John Campion.
trombone performed by Abbie Conant
Singing the lines (2008)
for soprano, flute/piccolo, B-flat clarinet, double bass, percussion, and piano, 9’
music by Cindy Cox
text by John Campion
I. “Light changes”
II. “Walking, Naming It”
performed by Lucy Shelton, soprano
Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players
David Milnes, conducting
The large-scale form for ME mirrors the classic seven yogic steps as follows:
1. Preconscious ME, Open Vowel Space
2. ME Builds the Language Wall
3. ME Sings His Narcissistic Canon
4. ME Sings His Greatest Song
5. ME Speaks to the Crowd.
6. ME Speaks to His Prompter
7. ME Is Cast Into the Future and Dies
Edmund Campion, music
John Campion, text and concept
Beethoven’s Melodram, for glass harmonica with recitation, was composed in 1814 as incidental music for Friedrich Duncker’s drama entitled Leonore Prohaska. My Melodrama, for electronic medium, was composed in 2003 as a long coda, attached to the end of Beethoven’s trifle.
L’Autre (The Other)
