Composer of the Day!

Today's Composer of the Day! is Kurt Schwitters.

(1887-1948)

Schwitters was a Dadaist/Surrealist painter, sculptor, poet, and sound artist ("composer"). He experimented with, well, lots of different things, especially collage. He invented his own school of collage-based art called "Merz".

Here are some things that he made:


That is fun to look at, no? How about this one, it's called "Murder Machine":

Hm. Perhaps marginally less fun to look at, but still full of Bauhaus-y goodness!

Anyway. Here are lots more things to look at...er, at which to look.

Schwitters was a pioneer in sound art, taking advantage of emerging recording technologies to design recorded nonsense poetry. The most famous example is the Ursonate (link to score).

I know, right? How freaking cool is that? But here is a link to Schwitters performing the piece:

A Link to Schwitters Perorming Ursonate.

Awesome. You should listen to his music.