L.'s.G.A. (Lincoln's Gettsyburg Address) is a multimedia performance featuring three films, music, and the poet Michael Holloway reciting the Gettsyburg Address through an oxygen mask feeding him helium from a tank whose valve he can control for effect. The MP3 below was recordewd at Nature's Table in 1969.
| L's. G. A. (Excerpt) MP3 | A composition by Salvatore Martirano, featuring Michael Holloway on helium | 7:11 | 6.6MB |
L'sG.A. Salvatore Martirano
Fourscore and seven. Seven? Seven Sections!
I. Forksore, a stomach real and imagined. Imagine a real storm-ache;
the bottom ascends, swirling sauce, muddy brown it boils down
eudiometrically. Intergastric electricalization. Fango-therapy,
it's delizioso
II. Boom, Boom Boom, Boom!
Eat and be eaten by the calefactive cannonball of Kiln 574.5.
III. L'sA.H. rises slowly, draws from his pocket a paper and when a
commotion subsides, in a sharp unmusical treble voice, reads the
brief and pithy remarks. (end of quotation)
IV. Speeded-up. A lion caged? A Cagey lion a the blat in Mudville.
V. A case of canned knots and furthermore would knocks.
L'sB.J. saith: Thou shalt not; Thou shalt not; Thou shalt not;
plus 7.
VI. Ox-tongue mined are raids. Look out! Sirenes wail. Intermedium?
The General clubwoman said: War is, hell, raw electro-anathesia.
VII. Babies. Babies slobbering, dribbling saliva. A megaton of spit
orbits and slides. Two hundred and fifty men, a link and a chain
toward epiphany. Whose hearts, whose sweet voice, cry music, when
soft voices die, lingers in the Memor-eye?
"...this is not a verbal analog or a description of the composition but a literary companion to it, complete in itself. Perhaps it should be read a day or two before or immediatley after one hears the music. LsGA was chosen for one simple reason: of the approximately two hundred mixed media works that were considered for a series presenting only two concerts a season, Martirano's savage, tender and elegantly crafted work proved the most artistically successful... If one is shocked, stunned and , in the conclusion, edified by this powerful experiential statement, one is then made aware, through art, of a very creative exposition of today's Weltanschauung. This work goes far beyond the possible "campy" interpretation of its title (a wrong interpretation) into regions of terrifying violence and equally vivifying hope. From Monteverdi to the work under discussion, the theatre piece of any consequence aims for the solar plexus, delivering a haymaker. Martirano not only delivers the haymaker, but presents us with a deus ex tempore who haymakes the haymaker."
--From a statement by Charles Whittenberg (Music Director University of Connecticut Nov 17,1969)
Articles & Reviews of L's.G.A. |
- Lincoln Address Distorted in Poem Electric Ear Offers Antiwar , Mixed Media Assault. A review by Theodore Strongin printed in the Village Voice.
- Avant Garde Entices Oberlin With Mixed-Media 'L's GA' An article by Wilma Salisbury.