'The Masterwork' Award Winning Fish-Knife

'The Masterwork' Award Winning Fish-Knife is a 1979 performance sculpture by Paul Richards and Bruce McLean with music by Michael Nyman. The companion album is the second release by Michael Nyman and the first release including the Michael Nyman Band. It was released by Audio Arts magazine only on audiocassette, initially in a limited edition of 300 copies, although many more were produced which have the number boxes blank.

The music was performed by the Michael Nyman Band, recorded live in one take and ending in applause at Riverside Studios and edited for the album by William Furlong, Audio Arts' editor-in-chief.

The artwork is a four-part theatre work that "deals with the consequences after the unveiling of the ultimate architectural masterwork, a 'model' for society."^[1] The four parts of the work are dance, dramatics, gymnastics, and contemporary sound, including music, dialogue, and noises, with each discipline utilized in a way to emphasize its unique qualities.

The first side of the album is the dialogue sculpture for four voices reducing to one. There are many voices, male and female, as many as four at once, none of whom are identified, but one is Michael Nyman. The voices comment on architecture, social class, welfare, Jimmy Carter, and the nature of art, among other things, often as arrogant or stentorian characters. There are complaints about 'The Masterwork,' particularly by a workaday architect who does not consider himself "slashed" with multiple disciplines. There is also brief mention of a "mirrored fish-knife." This portion of the album is a multitracked, overlaid studio production.

The second side is Furlong's edit of the music, known as "Masterwork Samples." The music bears "no necessary dramatic relation" to the dramatic structure of the performance sculpture, but the music's exposition is "truncated, short-circuited, accelerated or run continuously where later they may be fragmented." The music is based on permutations of an 8-chord model, including substitutions and interpolations.

The section "The Woman Who Had Everything" develops musical material from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra K. 364, which Nyman would later use as a basis of material in Drowning by Numbers.^[2] Some of the music also formed the basis for Nyman's "M-Work" on Michael Nyman, as well as of the opening titles music for The Falls.

The cassette cover announces that the world premiere of 'The Masterwork' Award Winning Fish-Knife would be given in November, 1979. The 2011 liner notes for the CD release of Michael Nyman, in the commentary on "M-Work", state that the project never advanced further than this audiocassette release.

Personnel

No one is credited on the album apart from Nyman, Richards, McLean, and Furlong, a group credit for the Michael Nyman Band, and E. Hallett &. Co. for the printing.

References

↑ Liner notes. All quotations are from this source unless otherwise specified.
↑ Pwyll ap Siôn. The Music of Michael Nyman: Text, Context and Intertext. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. p. 103.

Michael Nyman

Michael Nyman Band - current members	Gabrielle Lester Catherine Thompson Kate Musker Tony Hinnigan David Roach Simon Haram Andrew Findon Nigel Barr Dave Lee Steve Sidwell Martin Elliott Sarah Leonard

Former members and others	Alexander Bălănescu John Harle Chris Laurence Ann Morfee Jonathan Carney Madeleine Mitchell Jamie Talbot Georgina Born Marjorie Dunn Beverley Davison Barry Guy John Greaves Andrew Shulman Michael Thompson Richard Watkins John Metcalfe Christian Forshaw Ute Lemper Marie Angel Hilary Summers Omar Ebrahim David Cunningham Molly Nyman

Nyman-produced albums	Decay Music 'The Masterwork' Award Winning Fish-Knife Michael Nyman The Draughtsman's Contract The Cold Room The Kiss and Other Movements A Zed & Two Noughts And Do They Do/Zoo Caprices The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat Drowning by Numbers La Traversée de Paris The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover Out of the Ruins La Sept String Quartets 1–3 Prospero's Books The Michael Nyman Songbook The Hairdresser's Husband The Essential Michael Nyman Band Time Will Pronounce The Piano Michael Nyman for Yohji Yamamoto The Piano Concerto/MGV À la folie Live Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs Carrington The Diary of Anne Frank After Extra Time The Ogre Enemy Zero Concertos Gattaca The Suit and the Photograph Strong on Oaks, Strong on the Causes of Oaks Practical Magic Ravenous Wonderland The Commissar Vanishes Nabbie's Love The End of the Affair The Claim String Quartets 2, 3 & 4/If & Why Facing Goya 24 Heures de la vie d'une femme Sangam: Michael Nyman Meets Indian Masters The Actors Man and Boy: Dada The Piano Sings The Libertine The Composer's Cut Series Vol. I: The Draughtsman's Contract The Composer's Cut Series Vol. II: Nyman/Greenaway Revisited The Composer's Cut Series Vol. III: The Piano Six Celan Songs • The Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi Acts of Beauty • Exit no Exit Nyman Brass Love Counts Mozart 252 8 Lust Songs: I Sonetti Lussuriosi The Glare Acoustic Accordions Collections The Composer's Cut Series Vol. IV: Vertov Sounds

Albums to which Nyman contributed (as composer and/or performer)	Recent English Experimental Music The Pavilion of Dreams From The Kitchen Archives - New Music New York 1979 The Sensual World Saxophone Works John Harle's Saxophone Songbook Piano Circus The Contemporary Trumpet Taking a Line for a Second Walk Plus que Tango Visions First & Foremost An Eye for a Difference Pick It Up Meeting Point: The Saxophone Concertos of Nyman, Heath and Torke Twentieth-Century Blues: The Songs of Noel Coward Generation Sex The Golden Section Faces Ahn-Plugged Groovebox Moving On

Singles/EPs	Mozart/Webern The Heart Asks Pleasure First/The Promise Anohito no Waltz In Re Don Giovanni Enemy Zero Piano Sketches

Compilations	Michael Nyman Pure Moods The Very Best of Michael Nyman: Film Music 1980–2001 Man on Wire

Additional operas	Tristram Shandy Letters, Riddles and Writs Vital Statistics La Princesse de Milan

Unreleased film scores	Vertical Features Remake The Falls Brimstone and Treacle Ballet Mécanique Monsieur Hire Mesmer Katie and Orbie Titch Act Without Words I Man with a Movie Camera Nathalie... À propos de Nice A Cock and Bull Story

Major individual compositions	Memorial MGV

Les Disques du Crépuscule Minimalist music Systems music

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, April 12, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.