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Lars-Gunnar Bodin


1. CYBO II, 1967 (5'51)

2. Enbart för Kerstin, 1979 (12'49)

Kerstin Ståhl, mezzo-soprano

3. For Jon III (they extricated their extremities), 1982 (12'49)


4. On Speaking Terms II: Poem no. 4, 1986 (2'24)


5. On Speaking Terms II: Poem no. 5, 1986 (1'00)


Place of plays

From Music for TAPE/BAND - Musik from Sweden


Dedicated to you II

From Music for TAPE/BAND - Musik from Sweden





From The Pioneers: Five Text-Sound Artists
(Phono Suecia, PSCD 63)

CYBO II was composed in 1967 especially for the English-speaking section of the Swedish Radio's foreign broadcasts. At that time I was working on a series of pieces that were all based on the same themes or ideas. The name CYBO is derived frrom Cyborg, an abbreviation of the term cybernetic organism which was first introuduced by the American popular science writer Halacy. The language which I have used in "composing" the text is taken from the spehere of technical science, a language which is not normally considered to have any poetic value. Each unit or sound has a phonemic significance.

ENBART FÖR KERSTIN (Just for Kerstin) from 1979 is dedicated to Kerstin Ståhl and was first performed at the Stockholm festival of electronic music the same year. The work was originally composed for purely didactic purposes. I was in charge of an electro-acoustic workshop that year at the Electronic Music Studio. I always try to include a course in text-sound composition in my teaching and "Enbart" was written to demonstrate how to write a text-sound composition that lies at the point where words and music intersect. I have never been interested in using my own or other people's texts to compose "songs" of any kind.

The text of "Enbart" describes an arch which stretches from absolutely nothing up to the highest point approximately half way through the work and then back to nothing again. The work is recited in a "sing-song" manner but is interspersed from time to time by a spoken commentary. One part is performed live together with eight other parts that are recorded on tape. The taped parts are composed in a kind of chordal compound whose primary function is to colour the voice in different ways.

For Jon III is in two independent parts of which the first is presented here. The work was written as a tribute to John Cage on his 70th birthday and was presented together with tributes from other Swedish composers of the Fylkingen LP. My idea was to try to "freeze" the words by repeating dissected fragments for cedrtain time periods, beginning with the word "they." Several layers of these fragments have then been combined and transposed.

ON SPEAKING TERMS consists of a number of unreleated poems, two of which are presented here. In this work I have been experimenting with different techniques. Poem No. 4 makes use of the so-called multi-track technique in order to achieve the singular linguistic texture. It could perhaps be described as a kind of micro-canon where all the textual layers start out from the same point but gradually glide apart since each layer or part takes either slightly shorter or slightly longer time due to differences in the playing speeds of the original tape. All the 16 layers are the mixed together as usual. It was during work on this poem that I discovered this method which I have since used several times -- FOR JOHN II is entirely built on this technique.

POEM NO. 5 is based on a type of feedback effect which can be produced in the studiomixer.