Experimental Bur Marlottke
Bur Marlottke - No Symbols Where None Intented

This piece is an attempt to set to music the two poems of the addenda (4th addendum and 23rd addendum) from Samuel Beckett's novel "Watt" (S. Beckett, Watt, Grove Press, New York, 1994, p. 247 and pp. 249 - 250). Beckett read these two texts like one poem. There is a recorded audio document. See for example: bit.ly/1PzHQ0E. It is one of the very few existing documents on Beckett's voice. The recording was made in 1965 by the literary scholar Lawrence Harvey in Paris. The extremely complex, philosophically deep, but also humorous text "Watt" is formally characterized by frequently used, almost hypnotic repetitions. Although already written during the Second World War, “Watt” thus refers to Beckett's late work, which essentially consists of texts on the edge of silence, whose defining characteristics are sound and rhythm. Reinhart Müller-Freienfels, then head of the television play department at SDR, a German television station based in Stuttgart, worked intensively with Beckett when he developed his works for television (1965 - 1986). According to Müller-Freienfels, Beckett's artistic point of view was as follows: "Over time, he became more and more suspicious of words that seemed so worn out to him …" (see: bit.ly/2DFZxA8). I try to take this into account. The title of the piece quotes the last addendum of "Watt". The cover photo alludes to Knott's habitat.