Deluxe vinyl with 20 page booklet. Edition of 400 available copies. Having remained relatively quiet over the last few years, The Henning Christiansen Archive returns with one of their most striking releases to date: the definitive vinyl edition of the pioneering Danish multi-disciplinary artist and composer’s Op.170 Symphony Natura. A visionary work of musique concrète created in 1985, integrating field recordings of animals made at Rome’s Zoological Garden with electronic processes and pre-recorded instrumental sounds, which Christiansen then installed at the zoo as a site-specific sound installation, radically rethinking the terms of electroacoustic practice within his emerging ecological consciousness. An absolute revelation that has remained largely out of reach for more than forty years, Op.170 Symphony Natura is yet another striking proof of how remarkably ahead of his time Christiansen was.

While currently regarded as one of the most singular and distinct figures engaged in experimental sound practice during the 20th Century, it wasn’t so long ago that the legacy of the Danish multi-disciplinary artist and composer, Henning Christiansen (1932 - 2008), rested in relative obscurity, unknown beyond a small but devoted following, with the vast majority of his recorded works remaining housed on tiny, out of print art editions, or unreleased. Thanks to the efforts of a handful of labels and publishers endeavoring to reissue his output and produce editions of archival recordings, over the last decade or so we’ve been graced with a wealth of material by Christiansen, revealing the depth and scope of the artist that he was. Fittingly, central to this initiative has been The Henning Christiansen Archive, directed by the artist’s family, which has focused its energies on releasing previously unissued recordings of important works. Their latest, the definitive vinyl edition of Op.170 Symphony Natura, represents Christiansen at his absolute best, harnessing rigorous focus with irreverent humor and play. A visionary work of musique concrète, made with the young composer and technician, Lorenzo Mammi, in 1985 (intertwining field recordings of animals made at the Zoological Garden of Rome with electronic processes and pre-recorded instrumental sounds) and originally installed at the zoo as a site-specific sound installation, this remarkable composition was chosen as the artist’s contribution to Slowscan’s now virtually unobtainable Fluxus Anthology 30th Anniversary 1962-1992 Sound Events X8 cassette survey, indicating its importance within his catalog. The Henning Christiansen Archive’s stunningly produced deluxe vinyl edition of 500 copies, complete with a 20-page booklet, marks the definitive release of Op.170 Symphony Natura. More than forty years on, it remains groundbreaking, riveting, and among the best Christiansen releases to have appeared to date.

A strikingly unique and visionary composer, who also worked across numerous other creative disciplines, Henning Christiansen was the most notable member of Fluxus’ Danish arm. A bridge between the world of fine art and realms of experimental sound, over the course of his career he continuously dismantled the boundaries and definitions applied to the arts. The purity of his work and ideas is striking, reappraising the very notion of what avant-garde practice can be. He was a radical collectivist as much as an assertive individualist (contradictory and reactionary, theatrical and inward facing), possessed by a singular vision that drove him down uncharted paths toward radical reconsiderations of the place that music might occupy in our lives. Like most artists connected to the Fluxus movement, Christiansen’s output and activities rested within a broad institutional critique that moved away from rarified objects in gallery and museum settings, toward live actions and editions of multiples. While this did result in a wealth of material, and the artist’s recorded releases during his lifetime numbered over a dozen, the majority of these were issued by small artist imprints in small editions, and quickly became nearly impossible to find, making sustained access to his work difficult at best. It was only after his death in 2008 that the momentum began to slowly build, with labels like Slowscan, Penultimate Press, Institute for Danish Sound Archaeology, Holidays, and The Henning Christiansen Archive bringing forth a wealth of material that indicated how prolific in the field of sound he had actually been. Not including reissues, roughly two dozen new releases attending to his output have appeared since 2009. The latest of these, Christiansen’s Op.170 Symphony Natura, is among the most striking to date.

Blurring the boundaries between composition, environment, performer and listener, in 1985 Christiansen set about creating an ambitious site-specific work at and for the Zoological Garden of Rome. Working with the young composer and technician Lorenzo Mammi, he collected field recordings of the animals housed in the zoo prior to its opening to the public (wolves, monkeys, birds and a great many others, as they emerged into the morning) that would make up the primary sonic material of the work that would become Op.170 Symphony Natura. Armed with a wealth of material, Christiansen then transformed those recordings through tape collage, electronic processes, and entwining them with pre-recorded instrumental sounds. The completed work was then diffused into the same environment by eight loudspeakers distributed around the central lake of the zoo, turning the environment into an enveloping spatial composition that entered into states of real-time evolution as the work interacted with naturally occurring sounds of the space, including those of the animals themselves: often responding to the work or gathering to listen.

While a single, cohesive work, Op.170 Symphony Natura is made up of a sequence of eight interconnected pieces (Gibbon In Glass - Sound, Kakadua In The North, Orso E Foca A Villa D'Este, Coro Di Scimmie, Canzone Di Lupi Con Basso Continuo, Cervo E Gibbone Nella Civiltà, Vogelorgel, and Il Mare Degli Animali), each entering into a remarkable state of musicality that balances the sounds of the environment and animals with instrumental, electronic, and tape based interventions, resulting in what has been described as “a constantly shifting sonic ecology: a collage in which distinctions between natural and artificial sound become increasingly unstable… a gloriously strange ‘Symphony’… neither documentary nor conventional musical composition”. While the composer humbly stated that “The music is already there. We have only revealed it”, and there is plenty of truth to this, Christiansen’s subtle hand is unmistakable, weaving magical serendipity with grace and care. Remarkably beautiful and inviting, Op.170 Symphony Natura is a percolating world unto itself: artist, animal, environment, and machine locked in a shimmering conversation. Made during a moment when experimental practice was increasingly marginalized within the cultural landscape, it forges forward, radically rethinking the terms of electroacoustic practice, framing spatial composition within its creator’s emerging ecological consciousness without sacrificing the eccentricity, humor and openness for which he is known.

Issued in a definitive edition, restoring the work to its intended continuity and sequence, Op.170 Symphony Natura represents an absolute revelation, even among devoted fans of Henning Christiansen. This stunningly produced deluxe vinyl edition of 500 copies, newly remastered by Rashad Becker, comes complete with a 20 page booklet featuring a new essay by Mark Harwood, as well as artwork, photos and other images drawn from The Henning Christiansen Archive, offering a definitive summary of the entire work. Once again we bear witness to a vital achievement of historical significance, furthering our understanding of what a vital and important artist Christiansen was.