Friedrich Danielis
"Florey´s Augenspiegelblick"

While the exhibition of all my artists books at the Bavarian State Library presented a beautiful possibility to view the wide variety of works - from Jeremy Adler´s wonderful poems to the unique "Stundenbuch", it certainly did not mark the end of things: during the exhibition I was already at work on the "Lehnwörter" which had its presentation in the Ver Sacrum Room of the Vienna Secession in the autumn of 2006.

Now the blissful folly of making books has led me into a world new to me: to use the handwritten manuscript of the composer Wolfgang Florey´s "Augenspiegelblick" (8 movements for violoncello solo written for Susan Salm), translated as "The reflection in your eyes", as "text", and the extended and beautiful notes the author wrote as an underlying sub-text.
The translation into English of this remarkable literary companion piece to the composition was my pleasure.

The musical score, written in pencil and printed in facsimile, Florey´s notes in German and English, printed in Berthold Walbaum book 12 p., and a sound document (as CD) of the world premiere, played by Susan Salm at the ACF in New York on February 8th 2008, form the core of this book.

They are surrounded by a group of drawings on transparent paper, forming a frontispiece to the manuscript that still shines through, giving expression to my desire to not intrude in the musical work but to play around it, and a "Leporello", a fold-out of drawings with gouache on "Carta di Paglia" (Rome, ca. 1970) that is in tune with the Hoffmanesque spirit of Florey´s composition and embedded in the cassette´s back.

As all these additions are original works, each markedly different from the others and forming a suite in the set of eleven copies when seen as a whole, each book becomes an original.

It was presented in the VIENNA SECESSION on Sept. 30th, 2008 with the first Austrian performance of Florey´s composition by Susan Salm.



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