Lorelei (the Long Distance Sonata) features Dieter Roth on piano along with his children, Vera and Björn. The work is comprised of two parts, 38 cassettes of music and a radio/cassette player that was prepared so that the radio and cassette could only be played simultaneously. Lorelei was released in 1978 by Hansjörg Mayer and Audio Arts in an edition of 20, each of which contained 38 cassettes and the prepared radio/cassette player in a hand-painted box. This selection from the edition is culled from the original tapes and the works are missing the accompanying radio playback.

Dieter Roth (1930-1998) was a prolific Swiss artist who worked in a diversity of forms including sculpture, painting, design, performance, books, poetry, and printmaking. Roth challenged conventions of art by merging different media and utilizing materials that decayed over time. He frequently produced artists’ books, and his groundbreaking publications remain monumental and influential to the medium. Roth produced sound works and created music throughout much of his life. He also ran a record label, Dieter Roth’s Verlag, that released his and other artists’ works in the 70s and 80s.

These recordings were originally presented on http://blogs.fhnw.ch/dieterrothmusic/publikation/ to accompany the exhibition “And Away with the Minutes, Dieter Roth and Music” at Kunsthaus Zug in Switzerland and the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin.

Special thanks to Michel Roth and Meike Olbrich for their help in collecting these works and to the Dieter Roth Estate and Hauser & Wirth for allowing us to present them here.

© Dieter Roth Estate
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth