Some words to Kurt Schwitters' URSONATE, by Jaap Blonk

Kurt Schwitters was born in Hannover in 1887. He studied at the Applied

Arts School, the Art Academy and the Institute of Technology. Refused by the Berlin
Dadaists, he started a one-man Dada group in Hannover called Merz. He made paintings,
collages and objects; he wrote poems, sound poems and plays, which he published in his own
magazine, also called Merz.
In 1919, after gaining a national reputation with the absurd love poem “An Anna Blume”, he
made contact with fellow Dadaists such as Hans Arp and Raoul Hausmann. In 1937
Schwitters had to flee the Nazis, via Norway to England, where he died in 1948, sixty years
of age.

At the source of Schwitters’ Ursonate or “sonate in urlauten” ("primordial

sonata" or “sonata in primordial sounds”) are two “Plakatgedichte” (“Poster Poems”) by
Raoul Hausmann, which provided the sonata’s opening line:
“Fumms bö wö tää zää Uu, pögiff, kwii Ee”.
Schwitters used phrases such as this to provoke audiences at literary salons, who expected
traditional romantic poetry, by endlessly repeating them in many different voices. In the
course of ten years (1922-1932) he expanded this early version into a 30-page work, which
Schwitters later considered one of the two masterpieces he created (the other one being the
“Merzbau” in his house in Hannover, destroyed in 1944). As such, the Ursonate cannot be
rightly considered a Dada work any more, since Dada was inimical to the notion of
“masterpiece”.

The Ursonate has a structure similar to that of a classical sonata or symphony. It

consists of four movements: Erster Teil ("First Part"), Largo, Scherzo and Presto.
After a short introduction the first movement opens with an exposition of its four main
themes (subjects), each of which is subsequently “developed “ (in the sense of development
in the classical sonata form), leading to a coda. It is noteworthy that the theme exposition
returns as a reprise before each new development but the last one.
Both the Largo and the Scherzo have a centered (A-B-A) construction in which the middle
part contrasts with the two identical outer parts.
The Presto has a strict rhythm broken only by a few interjections from the first movement and
the Scherzo. Like the first movement, it follows the sonata form: exposition (repeated
immediately in this case), development and recapitulation.
Next is the Cadenza, leaving the reciter free to choose between the written version and his
own. However, in his written instructions for future performers of the piece, Schwitters says
that he wrote his cadenza only for those among them who “had no imagination”. In my
performances of the Ursonate I always create an improvised cadenza on the basis of the
sonata’s thematic material. Only on the recording I issued, for reasons of completeness a
recording of the written cadenza is included as a separate track.
As a Coda, Schwitters uses one of his earliest Dada poems: the German alphabet read
backwards, here repeated three times with different tempo and intention.

Schwitters wrote a few pages of instructions for reciters of the Ursonate, mainly
dealing with the correct pronunciation of the letters; apart from that, brief prescriptions
regarding tempo, pitch, dynamics and emotional content are scattered throughout the sonata’s
text.

My very first experience with sound poetry was in the fall of 1978, when at the age
of 25 I had quit my mathematics studies at Utrecht University and was involved in poetry and
music, looking for ways to express myself creatively. In a workshop of poetry recitation I
took part of, a wide choice of material was offered, ranging from classic poets to
experimental and even to sound poetry. I immediately took to the latter and at the final
presentation of the workshop I recited one of Hugo Ball's 1916 "Laut- und Klanggedichte":
"Seepferdchen und Flugfische" ("Seahorses and Flying Fishes"). Ball recited these poems
himself in June 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire, the founding place of the
Dada movement.
A few months later, in February of 1979, I happened to hear Schwitters' Ursonate read by a
student of the Arnhem Drama School, at a poetry event in that city. Although the reading was
not a greatly inspired one, the piece was quite a revelation to me, and with no delay I looked
up the piece in Schwitters' collected works at the Utrecht University Library and made
photocopies of it.
At the time, however, I had no intention at all to be a voice performer. During my
mathematics studies I had taken up playing the saxophone as a hobby, and now I was taking
the study of the instrument more seriously and finding some opportunities to play in public.
Also, I had begun composing pieces of instrumental music.
The Ursonate was on a shelf in my room and every once in a while I took it out and read
sections of it aloud. This went on for about two and a half years, and by the fall of 1981 I
realized that I almost knew the piece by heart. Looking back at this from a much later time, I
am very much aware of the benefits of this slow process of internalising the piece. I gradually
and very intuitively formed my own interpretation of it, without any pressure from outside,
and without any knowledge of versions of it by other performers.
Of course I had told some friends about my fascination for the piece, and at some point it
happened that I was asked to recite it at a party, This performance was an instant success with
many of the people present, and as a consequence I got invitations to present the piece in
other places, such as a neighbourhood bar, a private concert at the Musicology Department of
Amsterdam University, etc.

The reception of these first public performances was varying widely. On many
occasions I was performing at rock or punk clubs as an opening act for a band, and lots of
people were not at all into it. Their preference was either to just talk with their friends or hear
their habitual kind of music. So they started to scream and protest, and often throwing things
at me, especially beer, which fortunately was mostly given out in plastic, not glass containers.
The culminating point of this kind of experience was a performance of the Ursonate, opening
for a concert of The Stranglers at Vredenburg Music Center in Utrecht in 1986, for an
audience of about 2000 fans. When I was announced, even before I had opened my mouth,
people started calling out: "Rot op!" ("Fuck off!"), and when I started, the atmosphere became
very much that of a football match, but clearly an away game for me. With massive roaring
they tried to drown out my voice, but of course the P.A. made me louder. Six stage guards
were working hard to keep people from climbing the stage and hitting me, and hundreds of
half-full plastic beer glasses flew about me. But in the course of the performance I managed
to win over at least a few hundred people, who were roaring in my favor.
The next morning one newspaper had the headline "Jaap Blonk Shocks Punk Audience With
Dada Poetry", which for me was a nice testimony to the fact that Schwitters' piece was still
very much alive, in spite of its age.
I now think it was a lucky circumstance that my first years as a sound poetry performer were
mostly involved with the Ursonate. The structure of the piece is so strong, its course through
climaxes and quieter sections so logical, that it gives its performer a relentless momentum.
Even in the most adverse circumstances I never had to stop a performance, I always made it
through to the end of the piece. If I had been performing my own sound poetry, I might have
given up and thought is was no good after all. But with the Ursonate I had the strong
confidence that I was defending a masterpiece which deserved to be heard in many places.
It was only in 1984 that I started to improvise with the voice, and from 1985 on I created my
own sound poems and started to perform them. By that time I had several years of performing
experience already with the Ursonate, so that my stage presence had grown strong enough to
bring it off successfully with my own first attempts.
Over the years until now I have performed the Ursonate in many different circumstances,
from primary schools to classical concert halls, from exhibition openings to zoos, for prison
detainees and on the street.

When in 1986 I made my first recording of the piece, for an LP to be issued by

Willem Breuker's BVHaast label, I wrote to the publishers of Schwitters' work, Dumont
Verlag in Cologne, to ask for permission. No answer came, and after a second letter for more
than six months no answer came, and then Breuker decided to issue the record anyway. But
then at last a very angry letter arrived, written by a lawyer of Dumont Verlag upon orders of
Ernst, the son of Kurt Schwitters. It turned out that Ernst had been on a journey in the Pacific
and had not seen my letters until much later. The letter said that the record was illegal and all
the copies had to be destroyed.
After an extended legal correspondence it didn't get as far as destruction, but still the record
could not be sold in shops anymore. Apparently Ernst Schwitters was convinced that the only
genuine version of the Ursonate could be by his father. When the Swiss label Hat Hut
Records issued a version by Eberhard Blum, they were taken to court and selling the
recording was prohibited in Germany.
Although I, and many people with me, thought that this recording ban was very much against
Kurt Schwitters' spirit (he had encouraged people to perform the Ursonate and even written
instructions for them!), nothing could be done against it until 2002, when Schwitters'
grandson Bengt helped in founding the "Kurt und Ernst Schwitters Stiftung" in Hannover
(Ernst Schwitters had died in 1996). From then on the ban was lifted and permissions could
be given to issue recordings.
I decided for a CD reissue of my 1986 recording in a remastered version, coupled with a 2003
live recording which gives a different flavour to the piece.

When the year 1993 saw a release of the Ursonate by the German Wergo label, stating that it
was an original recording by Kurt Schwitters, I could not believe my ears. By that time I had
heard the certified original recordings done by Schwitters for a 78 rpm record that was issued
in 1932 in a limited edition to accompany edition 32 of his Merz magazine, in which he
printed the Ursonate in its definitive version. Here Schwitters does two 3-minute sections of
the piece: on the A side is the beginning of the first part, on the B side the Scherzo. The
recordings are very lively and full of spirit.
Here on the Wergo CD was a version where the voice sound was similar, but the performance
was utterly dull, slow and expressionless. Also, it slavishly follows the written cadenza,
where Kurt Schwitters to my opinion would have presented a fresh, newly invented cadenza.
I was convinced that it could not really be him, and so were many other people, as I learned
in the following years. From a German radio programmer I heard that Ernst Schwitters had
recorded the piece himself in 1958, for an LP which I never have seen a copy of. Then I
discovered that on the Wergo CD one can hear the characteristic scratches of an LP, and I
timed them with a stopwatch, and yes, they agreed with the 33 1/3 rpm of an LP. So it was
very likely that this recording originated from the LP, possibly with some stations (tape) in
between.
Again there were court cases in Germany against people who dared to put their doubts about
the genuineness of this recording in writing, and they lost because apparently Ernst
Schwitters had testified that the recording was by his father.
Only in the past few years proof has been delivered from various independent sources that the
alleged original version on the Wergo CD is in fact the 1958 recording by Ernst Schwitters.

Nowadays one can hear many different versions of the Ursonate, both in live performances
and on recordings, and almost all of them testify that the piece is strong enough to shine in
whatever garment it is dressed: the true mark of the masterpiece. Somehow Schwitters as in
many of his vsual art, managed to find the right balance between quasi-naïve freshness and
strong structure. The piece is very much founded in the directness of real life, and still is great
art at the same time.

Jaap Blonk
Arnhem, Netherlands, June 2009