Petr Kotik - Many Many Women (Text by Gertrude Stein) [2CD]

Many Many Women by Petr Kotík is a large-scale composition for voices and instruments from 1975-78 on the text of Gertrude Stein's novella of the same name. It was published in Paris in 1910 as part of the book
G.M.P. - Gertrude, Matisse, Picasso.

Voices and Instruments performed by
Members of S.E.M. Ensemble and Ostravská banda

In 1972, the book was published again by Dick Higgins in his publishing venture Something Else Press.
Kotík used the complete text, which determined the length of the piece. Inspired by his close collaboration with the composer and singer Julius Eastman, Kotík began composing for voice in 1971. Gertrude Stein was the first author Kotík used in a series of compositions on her texts.
Many Many Women is the culmination of this series. A performance of the entire composition lasts almost six hours and features 3 pairs of singers and 3 pairs of instrumentalists performing in parallel perfect
intervals: fifths, fourths, and octaves. It can also be performed in a shorter version with a smaller instrumentation.

The Czech-American composer Petr Kotík (living in the U.S. since 1969) has created music that is original and lasting. Starting in the mid-1970s, Many Many Women was performed incrementally, as Kotík continued to compose the piece. The completed composition was premiered in its entirety in 1979, in a series of three consecutive 6-hour performances: at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, and in New York City, at Paula Cooper Gallery and at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
It was recorded in 1980 and released on Labor Records: a 6-hour studio performance, edited to a 5-LP set. It was released again by Paula Cooper Gallery in 2000 on a 3-CD set

Petr Kotík collaborated closely with John Cage from 1964 until 1992. This makes him the longest musical collaborator of John Cage alive today.
In 2022, he received the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a foundation started in 1963 by John Cage and Jasper Johns. The John Cage Award is given to leading composers, and Kotík is the first European-born artist to receive it. Only twenty other composers have received this award, among them Pauline Oliveros, Robert Ashley, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, Takehisa Kosugi, and David Tudor.

The current recording of Many Many Women features 2 sopranos; countertenor; tenor; bass-baritone; bass; 2 flutes; 2 trumpets; and 2 trombones. The poetic nature of the text evokes imagery that can lead
to staging. In June 2022, the festival New Opera Days Ostrava (NODO) presented the complete (one movement, 6-hour in duration) performance of Many Many Women. Subsequently, the piece was recorded and edited down to a length of a double CD - 142 minutes of music. The liner notes were written by the Viennese composer Bernhard Lang, who has been associated with Kotík for almost twenty years.

About Many Many Women
Composing and performing have always been synonymous for me. I have not composed a single piece without a planned performance. In 1970, I started to work with the composer and singer Julius Eastman, and I therefore had to use voice in my compositions. For that, I needed texts. By coincidence, I came across Gertrude Stein's writing, and I started to use her texts. They were all excerpts at first, but by the mid-1970s, I decided to compose a piece using an entire piece of Stein's writing, from the first to the last word. I choose Many Many Women, an 80-page novella.
Petr Kotík (b. 1942 in Prague)

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Tracklisting 2CD

CD 1
01. Many Many Women part 1 71'40

CD 2
01 Many Many Women part 2 69'39

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