Backing track generally describes an unfinished piece of music, the production of which requires supplemental elements and the interplay of different components. A finalized recording of a piece of music dating from 1917 was used as a starting point for working with this technique. This wax cylinder, recorded in the so-called “Griechenlager” (Greek Barracks) in Görlitz, becomes a piece for accompaniment. With the help of both musical and financial instruments, Serge Baghdassarians and Boris Baltschun produced additional tracks, which investigate the relationship between the supposedly separate spheres of music and economics. At the end of this process a one-hundred-year-old recording lends the term “historically informed performance” a whole new level of meaning. Backing track forms the third and final part of a trilogy initiated in 2012 and titled Common Cents, which deals with how to potentially articulate a crisis.
The radio piece is based on a performance that will take place on April 29, 2017 in the rotunda of the Fridericianum in Kassel in conjunction with the Parliament of Bodies.
Bouzouki: Thanasis Vollas; Bağlama: Taner Akyol; Programing cent/cent Converter: Sukandar Kartadinata
Kindly supported by the Sound Archive of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin