Many Many Women

Description

“Many Many Women” by Petr Kotík is a large-scale work for voices and instruments, composed between 1975 and 1978 to the text of Gertrude Stein’s eponymous short story. Published in Paris in 1910 in the collection “G.M.P. - Gertrude, Matisse, Picasso,” it was republished in 1972 by Dick Higgins, through his publishing house Something Else Press. Kotík used the complete text, which determined the work’s duration. Inspired by his close collaboration with composer and singer Julius Eastman, Kotík began composing for voice in 1971. Gertrude Stein was the first author whose texts Kotík drew on to compose a series of works inspired by her writing. “Many Many Women” is the culmination of this series. A complete performance lasts nearly six hours and features three pairs of singers and three pairs of instrumentalists playing in parallel perfect intervals: fifths, fourths, and octaves. It can also be performed in a shorter version with a reduced instrumental ensemble. The Czech-American composer Petr Kotík (based in the United States since 1969) created an original and timeless piece of music. From the mid-1970s onward, “Many Many Women” was gradually performed as Kotík continued composing it. The complete work was premiered in 1979, over three consecutive six-hour concerts: at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York State, then in New York, at the Paula Cooper Gallery and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Recorded in 1980, it was released on Labor Records: a six-hour studio concert, issued as a five-LP box set. It was reissued by the Paula Cooper Gallery in 2000 in a three-CD box set.