The Tinguely Machine

With the trivial motifs, borrowed from the scrap-yard of music history, the brass players portray the 'bulk garbage' thoughts of Jean Tinguely (1925-1991), while the symphony orchestra keeps itself rather serious or avant-garde. At one stage the chaotic 'Basler Guggemusik' with the Basel rhyme "Z'basel an min Rhi" serve as homage to the Carnival lies if Tinguely.

Particular care is taken in the experimental use of 'creaking noises' that is prescribed in the score for the strings: hard impressing of the bow on the strings produces a loud, croaking sound. The same is expected from the percussionists where the use of 'everyday' instruments like lids, buckets, brass plates or rods are prescribed, in order to produce a machine-like junkyard-flair of unconventional sounds. This lies wholly in line with Tinguely's way of thinking, who commented on his garbage-materials: 'I let them play tricks, be stupid and monkey about...one has to do that well and very seriously.'

'The joke is playing along with it in all seriousness. Tinguely's history is one of the rebel, who, as a young and uncompromising communist, wanted to be a carnivalist, wanted to revolutionise the conditions of a lost and unjust society, and , as an artist, wanted to be a carnivalist.' (Peter Gronau).
Tinguely formulates this similarity: 'I try to concentrate on the technical frenzy of our cheerful industrial world. I want to express this by almost distraught means - like Sisyphos, gridlocked, guaranteed without meaning.' Or: 'Art is upheaval. I organise this revolt. I take leave of the throne of art, create artworkd that expressly want to escape the system. Enjott Schneider