Dieter Roth

The oeuvre of the internationally renowned Swiss artist Dieter Roth reflects the multiplicity of his talents. He was active not just as a visual artist, writer, graphic artist, jewellery and furniture designer, publisher and musician, but also often united different media in works that one cannot assign definitively to any single field. Besides employing unusual materials such as foodstuffs, Roth also worked early on with the possibility of translating language into images, images into language and language into music.

Quadrupel Konzert was held on February 23, 1977 in the Musik Akademie Basel’s Great Hall. The concert, which ran for 1 hour and 26 minutes, featured Roth playing four instruments: a Hammond organ, the Great Hall’s house organ, a piano, and a French horn. The work is structured around four phases, each approximately 20 minutes in length, in which Roth plays the four instruments while occasionally singing and giving instructions to the sound engineer David Johnson. The first phase was recorded by Johnson and played back for the second phase, which allowed Roth to play along, accompanying himself. These steps were repeated for phases three and four, the last of which was followed by a series of encore performances lasting a total of 1 hour and 5 minutes