Page path:

Literature For Four Pianos, Op XI, No 3 (1969)

Tom Phillips

Tom Phillips

Ti­tle of the album: Words and Music
Ti­tle: Literature For Four Pianos, Op XI, No 3 (Track 02)
Publisher: Edition Hansjörg Mayer
Da­te: 1975
Me­di­um: re­cord 30 cm
Cover: T. Phillips

 

Tom Phillips' early musical development was only part of his artistic work. At a young age, he learned how to sing and how to play the violin and bassoon in the school orchestra. During a three-month stay in France, he bought a piano, which he taught himself to play.

After his first composition Four Pieces for John Tilbury, he developed other musical works, such as the libretto for Tarik O'Regan's Heart of Darkness. His love of opera led him to compose his opera, Irma. Irma is based on edited fragments of the Victorian novella A Human Document by W.H. Mallock, which also gave rise to the artist's book project A Humument. Phillips originally chose the novella at random as the basis for an art project and bought it for a few pence in a second-hand bookshop. For this reason, Phillips also refers to Irma as the "Threepenny Opera".

The album Words and Music was released in January 1975, even though the cover shows the Roman spelling of the number 76: LXXIV. It is a collection of excerpts from larger format works such as Irma or A Humument.

The second piece on the album, Literature For Four Pianos, Op XI, No 3, was written in 1969 with the help of Laurie Baker and John Tilbury and was published together with a score that Phillips executed as a "verbal score" in which the instructions for the individual parts are named with terms such as "promptly", "sliding", "fux" or "stone".

In addition to the record covers for his own musical releases, Phillips also designed the artwork for other musicians. He worked for King Crimson, Brian Eno (who had studied with Phillips and had a lifelong friendship with him), Peter Blake and Dark Star, among others.

PS