Colin Sackett: Typewriting

Continuum

Words taken from the score
of György Ligeti’s harpsichord
composition.
1992

commentary

Fifty-six titles selected from
the bibliographical references
in Born to sing, an interpre-
tation and world survey of
bird song, Charles Hartshorne,
Indiana 1973; the eighty year
succession of publication, from
1891 to 1970, corresponding
with the invisible continuum
of birdsong.
1994

kswhatab

Kurt Schwitters’ eleven-line
stammering poem ‘What a b
what a b what a beauty’ 1944,
with a parallel alphabetic
version of the five repeating
words.
1994

blackboard

After Ben Nicholson
1994

vignette

E B Ford’s recollective text describing the Hedge Brown from his 1945 New Naturalist book Butterflies, the constella-
tory reading numbered as quotation and alphabetical index.
1997

clicktrack

A timbreless, metronomic
‘pulse’ heard in headsets by
the conductor, or by condu-
ctor and musicians during the
performance of film music.
In either case, the purpose of
a click track is to ‘guide’ the
conductor and the musicians
temporally, so that ‘moments’
in the music will match
‘moments’ in the film as
intended by the composer.

“...there are several things
resembling click tracks that are
very limited, because there is
no way a performer can anti-
cipate a change... it comes
and there it is, they can‘t
anticipate...”

From an interview with the
‘composer for player-piano’
Conlon Nancarrow.
1999