Erratum Musical - 3 Voices (1913)

Ti­tle of the album: The entire Musical Work of Marcel Duchamp
Ti­tle: Erratum Musical - 3 Voices (Track 03)
Publisher: Multhipla records, Milano
Da­te: 1913, veröff. 1976
Me­di­um: re­cord 30 cm
Performer: S.E.M. Ensemble

Marcel Duchamp was not a composer in the conventional sense, yet he also conceived two musical pieces. Both are titled Erratum Musical and were written in 1913. The first is a short vocal piece sung and composed by Duchamp and his younger sisters, Yvonne and Magdeleine, both musicians. Erratum Musical premiered at a Dada manifestation on the 27th of March 1920 at the home of Dada artist Marguerite Buffet.

3 Voices: Erratum Musical - Duchamp's first musical work represents a score for three voices that emerged from a random process. Duchamp and his sisters each wrote twenty-five notes individually on a card. Each set of cards was put into a hat then the cards were randomly pulled out one by one. The cards or notes were then recorded according to the order in which they were drawn. The three vocal parts of Erratum Musical are marked in sequence as Yvonne, Magdeleine and Marcel. Duchamp replaced the highest notes with the lower ones to make the piece singable for a male voice. The words come from a dictionary and correspond to the definition of imprimer: Faire une empreinte; marquer des traits; une figure sur une surface; imprimer un scau sur cire (To make an imprint; mark with lines; a figure on a surface; impress a seal in wax). Duchamp and his sisters had written exactly the number of notes on cards that this definition has in syllables. The three voices are performed simultaneously in different tones. Through the combination of high and low, distant and near tones, the piece becomes visualized or a sound sculpture, as if one were sensing a room in its experimental musical environment. A facsimile of the score is part of The Green Box, written in 1934.

The title Erratum Musical, musical misprint, refers to a dialectical relationship between seeing and hearing. As a text selected from a dictionary, it is itself already a readymade. But by changing the order of the syllables with the help of chance, the text is transformed entirely in the sense of a play on words.

Duchamp explored whether sound could be visualized and combined with language by playing music in a random order, in other words, creating something artistic by chance.

_ATJ