DESCRIPTION:
Pemi Paull plays the world premiere performance of Musicum Umbrarum" from Two Wolfli Sketches, by Scott Godin. Performed live at the Chuch of St. John the Divine, Victoria, BC. May 25/2012

Drawings by Adolf Wolfli.

This work draws inspiration from the distinctive and unsettling work of Swiss "artist" Adolf Wölfli (1864 --1930), who, due to an abusive childhood and a subsequent succession of brutal transgressions, spent the majority of his adult life in psychiatric care. As part of his therapy, Wölfli was urged to draw, producing images evocative of his mental state: simultaneously simplistic (due to his lack of formal art training) and complex (due to the intricacy of detail and intensity emanated from these pencil drawings). Wölfli's works became extremely popular in artistic circles, as he became one of the first artists to be associated with the Art Brut or outsider art movement.

MUSICUM UMBRARUM -- ("music of shadows"): within many of his sketches, Wölfli composed melodies, incorporating an idiosyncratic notation of six-line staves, peculiar clefs, barlines and key signatures, as well as illegible collections of unbeamed eighth and sixteenth-note collections. This composition incorporates fragments from the 11th
sketch (S. 837) of Wölfli's "Geographical and Algebraical Notebooks" (1912-1916). These melodic fragments are manipulated to reveal various "shadows" implied in the title, using procedures similar to altering the position and intensity of a light source illuminating an object -- although the object does not change, its shadow varies considerably, occasionally beyond recognition of the original source.

This project would not have been possible without the generosity of the Canada Council for the Arts, who generously funded this project. Thank you very much for supporting this wonderful endeavor.

Scott Godin on the web: www.scottedwardgodin.com